Angel's Scar
by colobonema
Summary: A year after the events of the game, Squall finds himself troubled by Rinoa's growing unhappiness and fleeting glimpses of a woman who causes him to doubt his girlfriend's state of mind, as well as his own sanity.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I make no claim whatsoever to the characters or world of Final Fantasy VIII, which is the property of Squaresoft/Square Enix.

* * *

**Chapter I**

_Rinoa. _

He felt submerged in her presence, a tingling sensation that was so intensely _her_ that it jolted him out of his hard-won sleep.

Squall's eyes flicked open. His heart was racing, probably from some dream that had dissipated the moment he awoke. The only remnants of it were a faint buzzing in his head, and an urgent thought: _Rinoa._

Whatever the dream had been, it left him with a heavy feeling that something wasn't right with Rinoa. Squall shifted, and half-sat up in the bed to get a better look at her. His girlfriend was sleeping softly at his side, without even stirring at the movements he made. He ran a tender finger along her smooth black hair, brushing a strand off her cheek. He envied her ability to sleep so deeply. SeeDs were conditioned from a young age to wake at the slightest sound, or hint of danger. Rinoa's middle-class upbringing in Deling City had spared her from that. Despite the horrors she'd later experienced, the art of true sleep had never deserted her. He wondered if she knew how lucky she was.

He stayed still, watching Rinoa for a few moments. In the light seeping into his Commander's quarters from the corridor, he could make out a tiny frown carved into her brow. She'd been wearing it a lot lately. He wasn't sure for how long. Her face used to look so peaceful when she was asleep, didn't it? When had that changed?

The red digits of the bedside data panel blinked back at him. _3:03 am_. Squall sighed, and silently swung his legs onto the floor. The thick surge of adrenalin that had woken him had ebbed, but he knew there was no way he would be getting back to sleep. His nervous system was now primed to start the day, even if he would prefer to lie in bed with Rinoa for the next few hours.

He crept towards the closet, pulled a black SeeD sweatshirt over his head and fumbled his way into a pair of pants. He tiptoed across the floor of the living area in search of his boots, praying that he would not trip over the sleeping bundle that was Angelo. Rinoa's dog had a basket at the side of the sofa, but rarely remained in it until morning. He knew from bitter experience that she did not react well to being stepped on.

Squall decided that he may as well take advantage of the dead of night to finish up some paperwork. At least he was unlikely to be disturbed by the usual time-wasters: long rambling phone calls from Cid, video conferences with the President of Esthar that never failed to stray away from official topics, or Xu at his door with another punishingly thick stack of documents awaiting Squall's signature. He slipped through the door, closing it as quietly as he could.

The corridors of Balamb Garden's upper floors were deserted at this hour. The dimmed lights were still too white, too fluorescent for Squall's bleary eyes. He kept his gaze on the floor, noting how scuffed the dark blue carpet had gotten. He mentally added_ Carpet Replacement, Question Mark_ into a budget allocation spreadsheet that he and Xu were working on, and wondered what she would say about it. He pictured a derisory scowl, possibly accompanied by a few choice curses. It was fair to say that Xu and Squall had different priorities when it came to the Garden's funds.

The buzzing in his head was still there when he swiped his entry card to the Commander's office, and Squall shook his head in annoyance as he pushed the door open. Maybe he was just overtired-

_What the hell?_

Moonlight streamed in through the huge windows, illuminating a scene that didn't make sense. Squall stared at the figure hunched at his desk, her hands darting over the keyboard of his computer.

"But you were asleep," he blurted out.

Her hands froze, then her whole body.

Even with her back to him, he would know Rinoa anywhere. The tilt of her head, the way her hair fell around the the nape of her neck. But this was... strange. She was wearing a flimsy white tunic and pants that he'd never seen before. It made her look like a nurse. Or a surgical patient.

"Rin?" he said, uncertainly.

She slowly drew herself up to a standing position, still facing away from him.

"You're... not supposed to be here."

He laughed, a little nervously. "_I'm _not supposed to be here? In my own office? What are you doing with the computer, Rin?"

"Please go back to bed, Squall."

Her voice was strained. Something wasn't right. _No_, he thought. _Not something._ _Everything. _The sense of wrongness was overwhelming.

"Rin...?" he started, not quite sure where his question was going. "Why does everything about this feel wrong?"

She flinched. He was sure of it. _She's afraid. Why?_

"Please, Squall. Don't."

He stepped forward, his hand outstretched, determined to make her turn round. To see her face. See what was wrong. But his hand came up against a solid wall, some invisible pressure that occupied the space between him and his girlfriend.

"Rin, what-"

He pushed against it, and was instantly thrown back by a force that slammed him to the floor. Squall tried to raise his head, aware of a dull throbbing at the base of his skull. And something else, too. A familiarity. A memory, maybe. Had this happened before? Yes, it definitely had… and with Rinoa. Where?

"Rin," he croaked as he tried to rise to his feet. "I don't understa-"

She turned around and quickly threw a spell at him. In the split second before it hit, Squall's eyes registered the unmistakeable sight of a thin red line traced diagonally across her forehead and the bridge of her nose, her pale skin lit up in the moonlight.

_My scar_, was the last shocked thought his mind held onto before the powerful Sleep spell shut down his senses. _Why does she have my scar?_


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I make no claim whatsoever to the characters or world of Final Fantasy VIII, which is the property of Squaresoft/Square Enix.

* * *

**Chapter II**

His eyes opened to the washed-out pastel colors of Balamb Garden's infirmary. Rinoa was sitting by his bed, chewing on a fingernail. She hadn't noticed that he was awake. Her gaze was directed out towards Dr. Kadowaki's desk, where the doctor was sitting by her computer monitor, in quiet conversation with Quistis, who was standing with her arms folded, frowning.

Quistis glanced back at him and caught his eye. She tapped Dr. Kadowaki on the shoulder.

"He's awake."

Rinoa gave a start and turned to Squall. When he smiled at her weakly, she let out a small moan and reached for his hand. He squeezed it.

"Oh Squall, thank god you're-"

"Easy, Rin." He let her fuss over his hair. He really didn't care what it looked like right now. "How did I end up here?"

She stopped. "You don't remember?"

Dr. Kadowaki nudged Rinoa out of the way to peer down at him. She tilted his head as she stared into his pupils. He knew she was checking for concussion.

"You were unconscious on the floor of your office. Were you working late?"

"I don't... I don't think so."

Rinoa shook her head, those sweet brown eyes huge with worry. "He wasn't. We went to sleep together. I already told Quistis that. Squall, did you wake in the night and go back to finish something in the office?"

"I don't remember." The fog wouldn't lift. What the hell had he been doing?

He lay back, sinking his sore head into the pillow. Rinoa was still clutching his hand. _Rinoa_. There was something about Rinoa that he needed to remember. What was it?

Kadowaki's cool fingers worked their way to the back of his head, and he winced as she pressed the bruise at the bottom of his skull.

"Seems like you hit the floor hard. You were very deeply asleep, Squall. It's been two hours since Quistis found you. If I didn't know you were alone, I'd say it was a Sleep spell."

Quistis' eyes were troubled. "_Were_ you alone? We checked the surveillance camera in the corridor, but it didn't show anyone going in or coming out. Just you, at about three a.m."

He broke away from her gaze. He'd been Quistis' commanding officer for over a year now, but there were times when he still felt like her student. This was one of them. It was that worried, frustrated look in her eyes. It made him want to hide behind his hair and slump down at his classroom desk.

"I must have been alone, then." Why did he sound defensive?

"If you don't remember, is it possible that you were attacked?" she pressed.

"Attacked in my office? I doubt that, Quistis."

Quistis gave a sigh. "Look, I'd better go. As soon as you remember anything, make sure you report it." The Headmistress of Balamb Garden shot him one last look, turned on her heel and left.

Dr. Kadowaki took Squall's pulse and asked him a few more questions, none of which he could answer. How he fell, which part of him hit the floor. The last thing he saw before he woke up. It was all blank. Asking any further was pointless, and he told her so.

Her smile was placid. "It's my duty to find out what I can, Commander."

Kadowaki was never rattled, never annoyed. He could always rely on that.

She walked over to the doorway and added over her shoulder, "Take a few more minutes before you check yourself out, if you don't mind."

She knew him too well. Squall's habit of checking himself out of the infirmary as soon as the medical staff were otherwise occupied was a source of amusement and consternation among Garden faculty.

Rinoa watched her leave, and stroked the back of Squall's hands with her fingers. "You sure you're okay?"

"Yeah. Just a bit groggy."

He turned his head to look at the sheer curtains fluttering in and out, buffeted by the late summer breeze outside the window. In, out, in, out. It reminded him of something_. The day I… The day I got my scar._

The scar. That was it.

"You had my scar," he told her, sleepily.

"What?"

"There was something you didn't want me to see."

Rinoa's fingers stopped their rhythmic stroking. "Is this a dream you had?"

"I guess it must've been."

"Sounds like a weird one." She smiled to herself. "Me with your scar… that's a pretty strange image. You and me merging into each other. Hmm. I'd say... Maybe it represents your fear of us becoming co-dependent on each other and losing our own identities."

He sighed. "Have you been checking psychoanalysis books out of the library again?"

"Guilty," she grinned, but there was something uneasy in her eyes, he thought.

Squall moved his hand to place it on top of hers. "I'm not afraid of us relying on each other. Not any more. You know that, right?"

She wouldn't meet his eyes, focusing on the curtains. In, out, in and out. "Yeah. I suppose I'm talking more about myself."

"What do you mean?"

That little furrow crept back onto her brow. "Well, come on. I depend on you for pretty much everything, Squall. Since I became a sorceress, all I ever do is rely on you."

"I don't see it like that."

"Forget it. It doesn't matter."

It did, and he knew it did, but she cut the topic off firmly after that. He eventually got to his feet, and checked himself out when Kadowaki was busy in the storeroom.

* * *

The headache wore off long enough for Squall to finish reading through two mission reports. The arrival of Xu, with an inch-thick folder of Garden accounts, was enough to bring it back again. He nodded through her explanation while massaging his temples, and managed a few monosyllabic replies. Xu, impatient at his inertia, leaned across Squall's desk and typed a string of commands into his computer to open up the new version of the master ledger spreadsheet.

That was what did it. The nudge his memory needed. He stared in shock at the sight of her black, glossy hair falling across her neck as she bent over the keyboard, and he remembered.

"Squall, are you even listening?"

Her tetchy tone pulled him back to the present.

"...Can we do this later? I've got reports to finish first."

Xu left in a bad mood, which Squall barely noticed. He was too busy running the newly-revealed memory back and forth in his mind. Rinoa had attacked him. No. A strange, scarred woman who _looked _like Rinoa had attacked him. What it meant, he had no idea.

He'd approached her, and a force-field had thrown him backwards. It wasn't the first time, was it? It had happened before, somewhere.

He stared out of the window up at the mid-morning sky, the moon still hanging against a wall of blue, pale and misplaced. Then he knew. Space. The space station. When Rinoa was possessed by Ultimecia. That was where it had happened.

Squall drummed his fingers on the desk for what felt like several minutes, then opened up the security camera logs on his computer monitor. He slid the timer back to three a.m. that morning, and watched as - just as Quistis had said - a fuzzy, monochrome Squall approached his office and walked in a few minutes later. He switched to high speed mode, and dragged the timer further back, to two a.m., one a.m., midnight. Nothing. When he reached ten-thirty, there was his own image again, leaving the office, shoulders slumped with tiredness. No one else had been near the door the entire time.

Squall returned the timer to three a.m., and speed-watched four hours of a motionless door. Eventually, when the timer showed seven-thirty, he saw Quistis knock on the door, wait, knock more impatiently, then swipe her Headmistress' card through the security slot. He fast-forwarded some more. Two members of Kadowaki's medical team appeared, bearing a stretcher. He didn't need to see himself being carted away like a corpse. Squall closed the video log and leaned back in his chair.

Shortly after the war with Ultimecia, when an old meeting room had been refurbished and repurposed as the new Commander's office, Xu had suggested installing surveillance cameras inside. He had rejected the idea. Far too many classified conversations took place in his office, and he didn't want to risk the chance of the data being misused by anyone. He also didn't want a lens spying on him all day and night, denying him the chance to have any private moments with Rinoa, when she came to visit...

_Rinoa._ Could it really have been her? If he'd said yes to Xu back then, he'd be able to check. Would he see a fuzzy image of his girlfriend, blasting him across the room?

He reopened the security camera log and sat for a moment, his fingers poised over the keyboard. _I'm sorry, Rin, _he thought, as he switched to the video records of the camera fixed in the corridor outside his bedroom. Squall dragged the timer back as far as nine p.m., and watched Rinoa and Angelo walk up to the door. He felt a twinge in his chest as he saw Rinoa kneel down to ruffle Angelo's fur and whisper something to her. It felt like a betrayal, to be watching her like this. Rinoa and Angelo disappeared into the room. He fast-forwarded on, and saw himself slip through the door at twenty minutes to eleven. From then, there was nothing until he left again, just after three in the morning. He kept going. Rinoa did not leave the room until Quistis knocked urgently at eight. Even on the grainy, black-and-white image, the shock and worry was visible on his girlfriend's face.

That settled it. It couldn't have been Rinoa. She was in his room, his bed, the entire time.

_If she was possessed, she could teleport, _he told himself._ You saw Edea do it. Walk into thin air and appear somewhere else._

No. Rinoa was Rinoa. If he knew anything, it was that.

But the seed of doubt had been planted, and Squall could not stop it from starting to grow.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I make no claim whatsoever to the characters or world of Final Fantasy VIII, which is the property of Squaresoft/Square Enix.

* * *

**Chapter III**

Days trickled past, much as they had before, after the morning Squall spent in the infirmary. The only difference was those nagging thoughts in the back of his mind. He could not broach the topic with Rinoa; he could barely raise it with himself without burying it immediately under a slew of rationalizations. _I was overtired. I was dreaming, after all. I was hallucinating._

Except that he knew he wasn't. The clarity of the memory only increased as time passed. The whites of her eyes, rounded in fear, the angry line of the scar slicing across her face.

Squall could feel the questions in his head driving a wedge between himself and Rinoa. He stayed longer in his office at night to avoid talking to her, sneaking silently to her side at night when she was already asleep. Inevitably wracked with guilt, he would draw her close to him in their bed, which sometimes led to more if she awoke. They touched, kissed, held each other, and those nights brought him reassurance. She was still herself, and she was still his. But it never led to conversation. Even when they were together physically, he knew he was closing himself off to her, and he was sure she was closing herself off to him. It wasn't right, it wasn't what he wanted, but he found himself stepping back and watching it happen.

He was sitting in his office early one evening, staring vacantly at a mission report, when he was assailed with a rush of sudden, untapped emotion: he missed her. He missed seeing her smile and laugh. Hell, he missed seeing her with the damn lights on. It had been more than a week since they'd said anything more than sleepy mumblings to each other. This was ridiculous, and it was time to put a stop to it.

He shut down the computer and put the report aside. It was eight p.m. When was the last time he'd stopped work this early? Squall stood from his chair and shrugged on his jacket. Screw it. He was having an early night. With Rinoa.

He scowled at the gilt-edged portrait of Cid on the way out. Cid hadn't been the type to put in late nights in the same way Squall did, that was for sure. Garden's administration would not have been left in such a mess if the former Headmaster had pulled his weight. Or if Cid had bothered to appoint an official replacement before removing himself from Garden. If he'd actually announced his retirement, instead of leaving Squall, Quistis and Xu to gradually infer that Cid had no intention of retuning. If...

No. There was little point in wasting energy on resentment. Tonight was about Rinoa. Squall left the office, Cid's smug smile leering after him as he went.

* * *

"Rin?"

Angelo had come to greet him at the door, tail wagging, but Rinoa's presence was not immediately obvious. Squall made his way through the small living area of the Commander's quarters to the bedroom, as the hum of the shower reached his ears. He was half-considering stripping off to join her when he saw the open bag on the bed, and the pile of clothes lying beside it.

Squall sat on the edge of the bed, looking helplessly down at Rinoa's battered old duffle bag, the one she'd brought from Timber. The same bag she had run away from home with as a fifteen-year-old. And now, she was running away from him.

Angelo padded over to Squall's feet and laid her head on his knees, her dark eyes doleful. Squall stroked the back of her ears absently.

"I suppose you're going too. She wouldn't leave you behind."

Angelo closed her eyes and allowed him to carry on stroking.

"Wish you could tell me where she's taking you."

He heard the shower water drip to a halt, followed by the sound of Rinoa's hairdryer. A cold, hard feeling settled in Squall's stomach as two opposing desires tugged at him. He wanted her to hurry up and get out of the bathroom, and put him out of his misery. At the same time, he craved for this moment to stretch on indefinitely. This final moment before Rinoa could confirm the meaning of the bag on the bed, while he could still tell himself that it might be a misunderstanding.

Angelo twitched and stared at him, then pattered off to the bathroom door. _She knows, _he thought in defeat._ She always knows when Rin's coming._

"...Oh." Rinoa's mouth dropped open as she walked into the bedroom. "I didn't expect you to..." Her eyes traveled to the bag, then back to his. "I wanted to tell you properly. When you came back. I just... I thought it'd be after eleven."

"Well, you can tell me now."

She was squirming, and he felt almost vindictive watching her. _Say it. Tell me you're leaving me._

"I, well, I've been needing to get away from Garden for a while, and I thought I should just do it." She fiddled with the rings around her neck. "Just for a while, you know."

"Where to?"

"Timber."

He nodded. It was a stupid question, really. Of course she was going to Timber.

"I've only been back once since the Independence Treaty, and I was with you and we had all those official functions to go to, so I didn't have the chance to see all the people I really wanted to, and-"

"How long has this been going on?"

"I- What do you mean?"

"How long have you wanted to leave?"

She wouldn't meet his eye. "A... while. I just need a break from... being here. Quistis thinks it would put things in perspective for me, if I took some time away."

"You talked to Quistis about this?" _Why not me?_

"I thought you had enough to deal with, Squall. I didn't want to load my self-pity onto you."

Squall felt anger rising, even though he knew sympathy was the reaction she needed. "How can you see it like that? Weren't you the one who always told me to open up and trust other people with my problems? Remember what you said to me at Fisherman's Horizon?"

Rinoa didn't answer at first. She walked over to the headboard of the bed, and sat next to the pillows, her knees tucked under her chin. "I was a different person then."

"No you weren't. You're still the same Rinoa."

"That Rinoa... Her confidence, her naivety, her optimism... that all died when I became a sorceress. All I am now is... Timid. Useless. A burden. To you, to the whole of Garden."

He'd never heard her speak so quietly, nor her tone so dulled. He could recognize none of those words in relation to Rinoa. He stared at her in disbelief as she pushed a strand of hair behind her ear.

"Stop talking like this. It's not true."

"It is, Squall. You might not feel it, but it's true for me. I miss the person I was."

A tear teased its way free from one eye, and she rubbed at it aggressively. "I just need to be somewhere else for a while. And Timber... It was my home for a long time. I was myself there."

The silence that followed felt heavy to Squall. He knew he was supposed to shatter it with words of comfort, reassurance, declarations of love. Maybe she was expecting him to do that. But he didn't know how.

"How long will you be gone?" he asked.

"I haven't decided yet."

"Are you leaving me?" The words spilled out before he could stop them, and he hated how pathetic he sounded.

Rinoa met his eyes, finally. "I'm not leaving _you. _It's not you I need time away from, Squall. It's Garden, it's being who I am here..." She rearranged her legs, then said firmly, with a hint of irritation, "I'm not leaving you, Squall. And please, stop looking at me like that."

_Like what, _he opened his mouth to ask, but she cut him off.

"Like you think I want you to fix this. I don't."

"But I want to help-"

"I don't want you to. It has to be _me_ that works this out. I won't ever feel like myself again if I just keep relying on you for everything. Can you understand that, and still know that I love you? Because the one thing doesn't affect the other. Does that make sense?"

_No. _"Rin, I..." Everything he wanted to say seemed far too selfish. _Don't go. I need you. I don't want to lose you. _

"I... I understand."

"Thank you." She gave him a half-smile, then rose from the bed and started to arrange her belongings inside the duffel bag.

* * *

Squall was faced with a dilemma when he woke at five-thirty the next morning. Would she be madder to be woken before the sun had risen, or that he hadn't roused her to say goodbye? In the end, he settled for a kiss on her cheek just before he left the quarters. She mumbled and turned over, burrowing her face in the pillow.

"Take care, Rin." He took one last look at her in the half-light, and slipped out of the room.

The morning was mostly taken up with coordinating the two SeeD teams in Esthar, contracted by the Loire administration to assist with the clean-up of monsters that had overrun the city since the Lunar Cry. After more than a year's work, the inner city was officially monster-free, but the poorer outskirts and surrounding rural areas were still at the mercy of attacks. Selphie had been the leader of the squad dispatched to Esthar Southside for three months now, and was in her element. Her weekly report was delivered as always by video-call, and as Selphie's sunny enthusiasm spilled out through the monitor, Squall almost - almost - managed to tear his mind from the image of Rinoa boarding the trans-continental railroad, her train hurtling further and further away from him as Selphie spoke.

"Give my love to Rinoa, okay?" Selphie grinned before signing off the call.

"Yeah. Sure." He couldn't face having this conversation now.

If Selphie had still been around Garden, perhaps Rinoa could have had a better chance of staving off the feelings that had put her on that train. The two girls were as thick as thieves. He remembered how mad Rinoa had been at him when he'd assigned Selphie to Esthar.

"_You could at least have given me a little warning. She's my best friend."_

"_I can't allocate my mission personnel based on your feelings. You must know that. Selphie's the best qualifi-"_

"_You're not listening. I'd never ask you to keep her here for me. I just would've appreciated a heads-up. I didn't even get to say goodbye."_

"_I can't disclose postings in advance to anyone, Rin. Not even you."_

He'd been dismissive of her feelings, he realized now. Yes, he was in the right, at least according to the SeeD regulations. But she'd needed him to understand how Selphie's absence affected her, and he hadn't even tried to.

Squall pressed his palms into his eyes. This wasn't the time to think about this. He had a Garden to run.

* * *

Sleep did not come easy to Squall on the first night of Rinoa's absence. It was ironic, really. A year ago, he'd had so much difficulty getting accustomed to sleeping in the same bed as another person that he wondered if he would ever fall asleep quickly again. And yet somewhere along the way, her presence had become a crutch for him to settle. Without her gentle breathing at his side, his mind refused to slow, the pace of his thoughts keeping his body tense.

He drifted in and out of a strange kind of half-sleep for one hour, perhaps two. Then he felt her; she was there, and he fought hard to push up to the surface and break back into consciousness.

She _was _there.

Rinoa was sitting on the very edge of the bed, her feet on the floor. Her shoulders were slumped, her face down. He could barely see her, but the feeling of her washed over him.

She must have changed her mind. Which meant it wasn't too late.

"You came back. Rin, I-"

As he spoke, he reached out his arm and wrapped it around her waist. She stiffened immediately, and-

-nothing. There was nothing. She had vanished.

Squall could hear only the sound of his own breathing, and the sudden thudding of his own heart. He had touched her. She had definitely been there. And he didn't need to see her face to know, on a primal level, that he had been touching the _other _Rinoa.

He lay back, staring at the ceiling. There had to be an explanation. He would find it.

When he closed his eyes, she flickered there for a moment. The other one. Her scar - his scar - caressing her brow. The look in her eyes was one he'd never seen in Rinoa's. She was... hollow. Lost. Empty.

His instinct was to push the image away, but she had already gone.

* * *

The next morning, he needed her more than ever. He reached for his personal cellphone, barely ever used, buried at the back of the bedside drawer. She hadn't called him. He wasn't really expecting her to.

Maybe she wanted him to call her.

She would still be asleep, with the time difference. He typed out a text.

_Are you doing okay?_

A reply came, a few hours later. _Yes. Are you?_

Squall's fingers typed _I miss you_, then he thought better of it and deleted the text. She might think he was trying to make her feel guilty. She might think he was being too needy. He stared at the phone for a long time, then settled on _I guess so. _

_Okay then, _came the reply, much later, when he had returned to his quarters at night. His hand twitched with a strong urge to press the 'call' button, to hear her voice, to reassure himself that she was still coming back, that the Rinoa in his bedroom with her scarred face and blank eyes was just something from the depths of his own mind, a symptom of overwork...

_Okay, Rin. Take care. _

He pressed 'send'. It was pathetic, and not what he wanted to say at all, but it was all he could manage. He knew she wouldn't reply. He kicked back on the bed, the suddenly huge, empty bed, and barely restrained himself from inhaling the scent of her hair still lingering on her pillows.


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: I make no claim whatsoever to the characters or world of Final Fantasy VIII, which is the property of Squaresoft/Square Enix.

* * *

**Chapter IV**

Kiros Seagill's face flickered for an instant on the monitor. "Let me end this meeting by formally stating that Esthar has no objection to the automatic rollover of our contract with SeeD at the end of the present term."

"SeeD is in agreement," Squall replied. "I will personally ensure that the contract is renewed next week. Do you have any requests regarding personnel?"

"The extermination numbers are sixty percent higher in Southside. Squad Leader Tilmitt is doing an excellent job. Her energy appears to be boundless. The President is quite in awe of her. We'd like her to stay on, if possible."

"Understood". Squall tried to ignore the idea of mutual awe existing between Selphie and Laguna, and asked, "What's your position on the Northside team?"

Kiros smiled diplomatically. "I don't wish to criticize Squad Leader Quinn. It's clear they've been working hard. However, a rotation of personnel may be beneficial."

"I appreciate your feedback, Vice President." Quinn was an older SeeD with a long track record of successful missions, but he could not be compared to Selphie in terms of sheer battle power. Squall mentally scrolled through the SeeD roster. He needed someone who could equal Selphie's energy. The obvious choice was Zell. He would assemble a young, close-combat focused squad for Zell to command.

Kiros cleared his throat. "By the way, Laguna asked me to inquire whether you're free to accept a personal call later, perhaps around ten p.m. Balamb time?"

_This again_. "I suppose so. Is it urgent?"

"I believe he wants to talk about how you are, Commander."

"I'm fine. He doesn't need to keep checking up on me."

"These conversations are Laguna's way of attempting to build a relationship with you. He's aware that it's too little and far too late, but he still wants to try. Do you think, perhaps, that you might be able to humor him a little longer?"

Squall knew he was no match for Kiros' masterful negotiation skills, and relented.

"Fine. Tell him to call at ten-thirty."

* * *

Quistis' arrival in his office was unannounced. Squall was indignant to see that she had used her Headmistress' card to open his door without even a cursory knock.

"Quistis, you can't just-"

She walked over, set down a stack of small styrofoam containers, and started arranging them on the desk.

"What's this?"

"Lunch."

"I'm busy."

"Rinoa asked me to make sure you were eating. I'll be keeping my promise to her whether you like it or not." She shoved a flimsy plastic fork towards his hand. "Here."

He wanted to tell her to get out. A particularly petulant part of him blamed her for encouraging Rinoa to leave. He glared down at the lukewarm stir-fried rice Quistis had placed in front of him, the sight of the congealed pieces of egg threatening to make the bile rise in his throat. _Rin would've known I don't like this stuff._

Quistis opened her own container, and spoke without looking up. "I get it. You're mad because you think I talked to Rinoa behind your back and gave her ideas. But if you think it's my fault she left, you're not giving her enough credit."

He hated how right she was. "Stop attempting to read my mind, Quistis. It was annoying when you were my instructor, and it's beyond tiresome now."

She snorted. "Why do you think I do it, Squall? Because you don't communicate. So if I'm wrong, tell me why you're so mad at me."

_Because you brought me egg fried rice, and you're going to sit here until I eat it._ "Because you're being overbearing. This is between me and Rin."

He ground his teeth. _And because she went to you for comfort, not me. _That was what stung the most. His jealousy.

"I already told you. She asked me to do this."

"And now I'm telling you not to."

Quistis set down her fork and stared him down, her blue eyes hard behind her glasses. "She needed to leave, Squall. It wasn't my idea. I just helped nudge her towards listening to herself."

His fork pierced a hole in the bottom of the styrofoam container.

"She's not happy here. If I can see it, I'm sure you can. Garden will never allow her a role here on account of what she is. And Squall, if you're under the assumption that being the 'Commander's girlfriend' is enough of a role to give someone like Rinoa a sense of purpose, then-"

"Is that what you think of me? That I'd assume something like that?"

Quistis' long, level gaze irritated him even more than what she'd said. "Perhaps not. Perhaps this whole topic hasn't even been on your radar. Have you even considered other options for Rinoa?"

"She needs to be under Garden's protection." _My protection. She should be with me._

"Garden's protection, or Garden's prisoner? Which one do you think it feels like to her?"

"Are you saying I should just let her go? When you were the one who kicked my ass after I stood by when she wanted to be sealed in the Sorceress Memorial?"

Quistis sighed. "I'm not saying that. I just... I suppose I'm saying that none of us can understand how Rinoa feels. What it feels like to have inherited so much power. There was only one person who could have understood that, and... we killed her."

Squall could not believe his ears. "Don't compare Rinoa to _her._"

"But, Squall..."

He felt his tightly-wound anger heating up, ready to uncoil. "Why did you say that? Do you think Rinoa's going to become like her?"

"Of course not." Quistis stared at him. "Of _course _not, Squall. But whatever happened to Ultimecia to make her the way she was... she was damaged. Beyond our imagination, but... Maybe she could have been saved, if she'd had people who cared about her. Don't you ever think about that?"

"No. Never."

The cold edge in his voice was audible even to Squall, and it shut down whatever Quistis was going to say next. She ate the rest of her meal in silence, and stood, gathering the empty boxes. She pointedly left Squall's half-eaten meal on the desk.

"I'm leaving for the faculty meeting now."

He nodded. She lingered, a curious mix of expectation and pre-emptive disappointment on her face. He knew why. She was waiting for him to thank her for the food, and for her company. Squall did not feel grateful for either, but a year spent with Rinoa had rubbed some of his more abrasive edges off.

"Thanks for lunch, Quistis." Words that, a year ago, would not even have occurred to him to say.

Something brightened in her face. "You're welcome. There's hope for you yet, Squall."

* * *

He stayed late in the evening, working, avoiding his thoughts, and waiting for Laguna's call.

Sometime after ten, Squall pushed away from the desk and stared out of the window. The Alcauld Plains stretched out far below, illuminated softly by the lights of Balamb Garden and the moon above. Squall tilted his head and peered up at the moon, looming behind wisps of pale gray clouds. It was full, and seemed impossibly large, but he knew it would look even bigger next month. Xu had sent him another reminder about the upcoming supermoon, the night when the full moon would be closest to the planet. Supermoons had unpredictable effects on monsters, thought to be caused by the increased gravitational pull. Squall idly wondered if the beasts had an unconscious longing to return to their lunar birthplace, or if they were perhaps suffering from some kind of physical pain. Whatever the reason, a supermoon usually meant a spate of attacks from half-crazed monsters on towns and settlements, and a host of injured SeeDs clogging up the infirmary. Xu was right: he needed to start making preparations.

A chime rang from his computer, and Squall let out a small sigh as the video call ID for Esthar's Presidential Palace flashed across the screen. He pressed _Accept._

"Leonhart here."

The screen was filled with a grainy close-up of a gray-streaked ponytail, and half of President Laguna Loire's chin. Squall never failed to marvel at the fact that a man who so frequently took part in video conferences in an official capacity could be so inept at handling the technology when left to his own devices.

"Squall? Can you see me?"

"Yes, Laguna."

Laguna backed away from the camera until the whole of his wide grin was in shot. "Okay! You're on screen now. Oh, you're still in your office."

"It's a faster video connection in here," Squall lied. "I was doing some paperwork, anyway." He had reverted to spending as little time in his quarters as possible. Rinoa's absence engulfed every corner of it. He even missed Angelo. And then, there was the feeling he couldn't shake in the small hours of the night. That the other Rinoa was somehow close by, watching him in silence. He would awake and feel her, a shadow flitting across his mind.

Laguna's eyes creased in disappointment."I thought I'd say hi to Rinoa, if you were in your quarters."

"She's not there. She's in Timber."

"Visiting her old friends, huh? That's great."

"Yeah."

Laguna beamed a knowing smile into the camera. "Guess you're missing her."

"Mm."

"Wanna talk about it?"

"Not really."

"Sure 'bout that?"

Squall leaned his head into his hands and came to the unexpected realization that there was something oddly comfortable about idea of confiding in Laguna. Not because he was his biological father, he told himself. _Probably just because I spent so long inside his head... Any closeness I feel to him is artificial. But still..._

"She's... I don't think she's happy. I don't know how to help her."

Laguna scratched his head. "Hmm. Well, you know more than anyone about my track record with women. Hell, you witnessed most of it."

"I did. Leg cramps and all."

"Thanks for reminding me. Yeah, so I'm not best-placed for relationship advice, but-"

"I wasn't asking for it."

"_But, _Rinoa loves you, you great big dork."

Squall bristled at being called a dork by - in his opinion - the world's uncoolest man, and replied with indifference, "Thank you for that insight."

Laguna leaned back in his chair, folding his arms behind his head. "I hadn't got to the advice part yet. Y'see, women... most of the time they don't want you to fix things. They just want you to listen."

There was something familiar about this. Hadn't someone made the same point to him, long before? An image flashed into Squall's mind of himself telling Quistis to go talk to a wall, and he cringed silently.

"I... I do listen to her. But she hasn't been talking. She's been keeping it all to herself."

Laguna raised an eyebrow. "Thought that was more your style."

"It is. At least, it used to be. Rin... Rin helped me to change, and I didn't even notice that she was changing too. It's like we've gone in opposite directions."

"You're both so young, and you've had a lot of responsibility thrust on you. Rinoa, too. Maybe she needs some time to figure things out. Try to be patient with her."

"...Yeah. I..." Squall frowned as he tried to articulate the feeling that was bothering him. "I just want her to be happy. Then I think, maybe that's me being selfish... maybe I only want her to be happy because it makes _me_ feel better." He stopped, suddenly embarrassed. _Why the hell am I telling him this? Am I that desperate for a father figure?_

Laguna looked at him for a long time before sighing softly and saying, "You're a good kid, son."

Squall blinked slightly at the last word. Had Laguna ever called him that before? He wasn't ready to respond to it, and didn't, save for a small nod.

"This trait of yours, of overthinking things... Guess it must come from Raine. You sure as hell didn't get it from me."

Squall felt his cheeks growing uncomfortably warm. He definitely didn't want the conversation to go in this direction. "_Thinking _isn't the same as _overthinking_, Laguna," he said tersely.

Laguna laughed. "Yeah, now you really do sound like your mom."

That was too much for Squall. Avoiding Laguna's eyes, he shuffled the documents in front of him self-consciously. "I'd really better get on with my paperwork now. Give my regards to Elle, please."

He could feel Laguna's dismay without looking at him. Damn the man for being so enthusiastic about these conversations. Couldn't he see that this was a relationship that couldn't be pushed, would never grow naturally in the way Laguna hoped? They were little more than strangers. They couldn't even openly exist as father and son as long as they remained in their respective positions. If the other global powers ever became aware that the Commander of Balamb Garden was connected by blood to the President of Esthar, and had entered into several major contracts with the eastern nation without disclosing that fact... No. They could never be anything more than they were now. If Laguna didn't hurry up and realize that, Squall would have to tell him. And that would be excruciatingly awkward.

"Well, how 'bout we talk later in the week, then?"

"Maybe." Squall wondered why he couldn't say _No. Stop calling me. _Pre-Rinoa Squall would have had no problem doing so. But the person he was now could not bring himself to watch Laguna's face crumple.

"You take care of yourself, son."

Dammit. Why did he have to go and say it again?

"Bye," Squall mumbled, and cut the call.

* * *

_Received 1 new message._

He clutched the phone in both hands before opening it. Whatever tiny morsel she had written, it meant that she was thinking of him.

_Good morning._

She'd sent it hours ago, in mid-morning Timber time. He wondered what she was doing. Who she was with. Was she smiling, laughing?

Squall pulled the bedcovers up around his neck. She probably wouldn't see his reply for hours, either. But she had to know that he was thinking of her, too. That he'd wait for her, as long as she needed him to.

_Goodnight, Rin._


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: I make no claim whatsoever to the characters or world of Final Fantasy VIII, which is the property of Squaresoft/Square Enix.

* * *

**Chapter V**

Three nights later, Squall stumbled blearily into his Commander's quarters after a long evening of contract negotiations with the Dollet Dukedom, ready to throw off his clothes and creep into bed. He was almost knocked down by a full-body slam from Angelo, and it took his mind a few moments to register the significance of the dog's presence.

"Rinoa!"

Her name left his throat as a half-strangled gasp. She was standing in the kitchenette in her pajamas, her duffel bag on the floor, her hair unwashed and messy, her face uncertain.

"Sorry, I meant to-"

He never heard the rest of what she said. Squall crossed the room in three quick strides and wrapped his arms around her, far too tightly, judging by her squeak of protest. He loosened his hold as much as he could bear, and buried his face in her hair.

She wriggled free, and looked up at him, her expression half-nervous, half-amused. "Wow, you really missed me. It was only a week, Squall."

He was unable to speak, and tried to pull her back into his chest, but she held him at arm's length.

"It's more than that, isn't it? You didn't think I was coming back."

There was an accusatory note in her tone, which he railed against; how was he supposed to figure her out, when she wouldn't even talk to him? _Was this what I used to be like, when we first met? No wonder she always seemed so mad at me._

"I... I didn't know."

Rinoa flinched, wounded by his words. "I was always going to come back. I wouldn't leave you like that. Squall, I wouldn't." She bit her lip and stared at the floor. "I wish you could trust me."

Somehow, it had become his fault. "I do. It was just..." He trailed off.

Her fingers unexpectedly twined around his, and she said quietly, "That part of you, that little boy who believes that everyone goes away, he's still in there, isn't he?"

He wanted to deny it, but couldn't. She was probably right. Ellone's sudden, unexplained departure from the orphanage was the most formative event of Squall's childhood. It had shaped who he was, even now. He might be older, wiser, able to rationally understand what had happened, but he would never be entirely free of those well-worn pathways in his mind, deep grooves carved by so many years of compounded thoughts.

He nodded without looking at her, and Rinoa reached up a hand, her caress soft on his cheek.

"I'm sorry. Sorry that those feelings came back because of me. It wasn't intentional, Squall."

"I know." He tugged on her hand, and she finally came to him, letting him embrace her. When he moved in for a kiss, she slipped away again.

"Let me unpack my stuff first. I haven't even fed Angelo."

* * *

Squall waited while she showered, dried her hair, unpacked her bag and fussed over Angelo. When she finally joined him in the bed, he was half-asleep, but the warmth of her presence brought him back to his senses. He was keenly aware of what he wanted, what every part of him craved: to kiss her, pull her to him, to feel her skin heating up under his fingers. To bring her to the peak of pleasure and watch her in the aftermath, flushed, chest heaving, lips parted in a blissful smile.

And yet, without an invitation from Rinoa, he was paralyzed. He could not slip his hand around her hips or brush his lips against her neck, as he normally might. He no longer had any idea what she wanted from him, or even how she felt about him. The fear that she might reject him kept his hands pinned to his sides.

Rinoa shifted in the bed. "Are you still awake?" she asked.

"Yeah."

She didn't reply, and he wondered if she was already falling asleep. Squall fought off the urge to shake her awake, to demand answers.

_Rin..._ _I need to know that you still want me._

Tentatively, as gently as he could manage, he laid a hand on her arm. Rinoa moved a little, enough for him to realize she was waiting for him to talk. Now he had to work out what he wanted to say. _I missed you_ rose to mind immediately, but he couldn't say it. _She'll think I'm making this all about me, about my feelings..._

"Did it help?" he asked.

"Hm?"

"Going to Timber. Did you feel more like yourself?"

"At first I thought I did, but... Changing where I am doesn't make the problem go away."

Squall lay still, his fingers still itching to touch her, and said the only thing he could think of.

"I love you."

"I love you too." Her voice caught. "I do, Squall. That's just about the only thing I'm sure of any more. And I'm _glad_ that I'm sure of it. I'm proud of myself for loving you."

The way she met his gaze then, with fierce, defiant brown eyes gleaming in the lamplight, made him forget he'd ever doubted her.

"I just..." She faltered. "If all I am is the girl who loves Squall Leonhart, what am I when you're not there?"

"You're Rinoa."

She closed her eyes, and two slow tears carved out tracks on each side of her face. "I don't think I know who that is."

_Let me show you, _he thought as he moved in to kiss her, knowing that he couldn't voice it without sounding ridiculous. Squall felt her lips press against his, hesitant and nervous, almost as if for the first time.

Her tears had ignited feelings, thoughts and concepts in Squall that he'd never find words for, even in his own head. What he _did _know was Rinoa's body, every inch of it, and how to make her feel good. If there was still a way to reconnect with her, it was that.

He was flooded with relief as she leaned into his kiss, accepting him and all that he wanted to give her. Relief was replaced with excitement as she started to tug at his t-shirt, running her fingers across the skin of his stomach and chest, and when she began to fumble at the drawstring of his pajama pants, he gladly jettisoned all conscious thoughts and let himself succumb to the familiar rhythms and release of physical pleasure.

* * *

Rinoa was subdued during the act itself. He knew that she enjoyed it, from the raggedness of her breath and the way she clutched at him, but when it was over he saw in her eyes something like self-loathing. Disappointment at herself, he thought, for relying on him once more as a source of happiness.

She switched off the lamp and turned her back to him, and with a sinking feeling he realized that she was quietly crying and trying to hide it. While the entirety of Squall's carnal experience was limited to Rinoa, he was pretty sure that if a woman starts crying after sex, it wasn't a good sign.

He pressed his palm gently against her bare shoulder blade, feeling it shudder with her muffled sobs.

"I'm sorry."

Rinoa rolled onto her back, wiping at her tears with the back of her hand. "You didn't do anything wrong."

"Then I'm sorry that you're sad."

"I wish I wasn't like this. I can't... I can't seem to find my way out."

He stroked her hair for a while, still damp from the sweat they had worked up together. Her breathing started to slow, and he suddenly knew what he wanted to tell her.

"When you were in Timber... I saw you again. With the scar."

Rinoa twisted her head to look at him, her expression hidden in the dark. "It must be a dream, Squall."

"You don't think it's something you could be doing subconsciously?" he ventured. "A magic thing? Because of what you're going through?"

He felt her shrug. "I don't see how I could be. I can't be in two places at once."

"Well, do you think..." _You're being possessed? _He couldn't say it.

"Think what?"

"I... I don't know, really."

She was silent after that, and he allowed himself to drift off to sleep.

* * *

The buzzing in his head forced Squall's eyes open, some time in the early hours, and he knew immediately that the other Rinoa had joined them.

Sure enough, she was standing a few feet away from the bed, her white scrubs tinged a pale gray in the dim early-dawn light that seeped through the thin Garden curtains. She had not yet noticed that he had awoken. Her eyes were fixed intently on his sleeping girlfriend. Squall watched through half-closed lashes as an odd mix of emotions flitted across her face: sadness, yearning, something that looked like envy.

The longer he looked at her, the more his mind registered tiny differences between her and the Rinoa he knew. Not only the scar, that impossibly foreign interloper carved into her face. Her hair, he thought. It was a little shorter than that of the Rinoa who lay asleep next to him, and her caramel highlights were gone. There was a gauntness in her face that he'd never seen in his girlfriend. Her skin was paler than he'd ever seen Rinoa's; sallow, sick-looking.

Squall felt the hairs on the back of his neck begin to rise, and he said in a very quiet voice, "You're not Rinoa. Who are you?"

Her eyes widened with shock and slid to meet his, and the moment their gazes met felt like a physical blow, filling Squall with a piercing coldness that spread throughout his body.

"Get me out of here."

Her voice was flat, muted, but a passable imitation of his girlfriend's. She screwed up her eyes and hissed, "Now."

She vanished cleanly away, leaving Squall staring at the bookshelf that stood behind the space she had occupied an instant ago.

His own Rinoa stirred against him, letting out a soft moan in her sleep. He pulled her closer, trying to stay the tremble that had crept into his arms.

* * *

A/N: Thank you for the reviews so far!

In between Chapter IV and this chapter, I posted a one-shot called "Stopped", which is a prequel to this fic from Rinoa's perspective. It's not necessary to understand the story, but take a look if you're interested. Thanks for reading! -colobonema


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: I make no claim whatsoever to the characters or world of Final Fantasy VIII, which is the property of Squaresoft/Square Enix.

* * *

**Chapter VI**

Irvine leaned over and swiped a Galbadian fry off Squall's plate, before wiping the grease off his fingers and onto the table. "Any word on when Sefie comes back?"

Lunch in the cafeteria had become a rare occurrence for Squall. It was odd, he thought, how his presence seemed to cause his friends to appear suspiciously quickly, to the point where he wondered if Irvine and Zell were spending the majority of their off-mission days hanging around there, eating, relaxing, and playing Triple Triad at the cafeteria's laminated gray tables. While he could hardly blame them if they did, he couldn't help feeling a stab of resentment at the stark differences between the life of the Commander and that of regular SeeDs.

Squall tossed his paper napkin at Irvine and stared at him meaningfully until Irvine half-heartedly blotted it against the greasy patch. "Esthar wants to keep her for another three months."

"Aw, dammit. Three months?" Irvine scowled and scrunched the napkin up into a tiny ball.

Zell sipped on his brightly-colored energy drink, looking at Irvine coolly. Squall had hoped to broach the topic of dispatching Zell to Esthar as Selphie's counterpart in Northside, but it wasn't appropriate to discuss the matter in front of Irvine. He would have to talk to him alone later on.

"You still gonna mess her around after she comes back, huh?" Zell's eyes were uncharacteristically stony.

Irvine's scowl deepened. "I'm not having this conversation."

"I dunno what's going on between you two, but you'd better not keep her hanging on until you feel like making it official. It's not cool, man."

Irvine's eyes flashed. "Is that what everyone assumes? That it's me who doesn't want to be tied down?" He glared at Zell and Squall in turn. "That's what you all think, huh? It figures, but... Goddammit."

He gave a drawn-out sigh, took off his black stetson and dragged a hand through the long strands of hair that stubbornly refused to be contained in his ponytail. "Sefie's the one who... Listen, if she decided she wanted to be my girlfriend, I'd be shoutin' it from the roof of the damn Garden. I've loved her since we were kids."

Zell's eyebrows rose. "So what's the deal?"

Irvine jammed his hat back on and frowned. "Says she doesn't need the drama. I can't figure her out. I thought for a while it might be a status thing. Y'know, like she couldn't be seen to be dating me while I was still technically a cadet. Then I passed my SeeD exam, and still nothin' changes."

"So you're just friends," Squall surmised.

A far-off, dreamy expression sneaked its way across Irvine's face. "Friends don't do half the stuff we do. She-"

Zell set his plastic cup down in disgust. "I don't need to hear this, man."

"Yeah. You're right. Sefie would kick my ass to Trabia and back." Irvine looked glum again. "Maybe she's lining up other options. Hey, she's enjoying herself in Esthar." He shot a look at Squall. "Could be she's waiting for your old man to notice her. Maybe he already has."

Squall felt his jaw tighten. "Don't joke about that. Ever."

"Who said I was joking?" said Irvine darkly. "She worships the damn ground he walks on. Any man with half a brain cell would take advantage of that."

_That rules out Laguna then, _Squall told himself, but the suggestion was enough to make his hackles rise. "You're dismissed, Kinneas."

"Pretty sure you can't dismiss me from my lunch, Commander." Irvine smirked and helped himself to another fry from Squall's plate.

Squall removed the plate, picked up his tray and rose to his feet. "Then I'm dismissing myself."

Zell stood with him, as Irvine triumphantly claimed the half-eaten plate of fries. "Hey, Squall. Feel like training later? After the cadets have all cleared out?"

Squall shook his head, thinking of the pile of reports waiting in his office. "Too much work."

"Might help clear your mind." Zell grinned encouragingly.

Squall's hand twitched, in the way it always did when he thought about his gunblade. _What the hell. I need to move my body once in a while. _"Yeah. You're right."

* * *

"Glad you made it, man."

Zell was waiting for him at the entrance to the Training Center, jiggling up and down with an energy that clearly itched to be released.

Squall's hand closed around the hilt of Lion Heart, and a rush of euphoria flooded his chest. "Me too."

"C'mon, then."

Squall squinted under the glare of the floodlights as they walked into the first clearing of the Center, the familiar woody smell and humidity closing in on his nose. He saw a movement behind a clump of ferns - a Grat, probably - and fought down the urge to charge straight at it. First things first.

"Zell. Before we start, a word."

Zell looked at him expectantly.

"We're renewing the contract with Laguna. I want to send you out to Esthar to replace Quinn."

"Me? Really?" His eyes sparkled at Squall's nod. "Awesome. I won't let you down."

"I know."

Zell smiled brighter at Squall's admission of confidence, then burst out laughing. "Ah, c'mon. Just go for the damn thing. We can carry on talking afterwards."

Squall looked at him blankly. "What?"

"The Grat, Squall. You've been checking it out like it's Rinoa in a miniskirt."

Squall felt himself redden at that, and turned, hiding his face. His feet carried him towards the ferns, and he slashed across them with his gunblade, startling the Grat into the open. One stab and twist later, and it was motionless on the ground.

Zell jogged over to his side and clapped him on the shoulder. "Feel better?"

"Slightly."

"You look stressed, man. I mean, more than usual."

"Yeah, well."

"I guess with Rinoa going to Timber, and all..."

"Yeah." Squall wondered how long it would take to shut this conversation down. His body and mind both screamed at him for more action.

Zell, as usual, was not one to read Squall's mood. "It must've done her good. I mean, it gets Rin down, y'know, what people say about her."

Squall turned to face him. "What do people say about her?"

"Uh... You don't know?"

"No."

"Huh." Zell scratched his neck. "It makes sense that no-one would ever say stuff when you're around, but I kind of figured Rin had talked to you about it."

"She hasn't."

"She probably doesn't want to worry you. Damn. She's gonna be mad at me."

"Just tell me, Zell." He knew he was glaring, from the way Zell inched away from him.

"Well, it's... for starters, there's the whole 'if she's a sorceress, why aren't we kicking her ass?' angle. Some people think she's a danger to SeeD, you know? That she's got you under a spell or something. Then there's others who keep asking why she's allowed to stay at Garden, since she's not a cadet. Who pays for her to stay here, stuff like that. There's people who say she's just here for you to- well, you know."

"I do not _know,_" Squall said coldly. "For me to what?"

"Aw, don't make me say it, man. This place is full of horny teenagers, you must know they can be pretty crude."

"How long has this been going on?" Pieces were falling into place, and Squall couldn't believe he hadn't seen them until now. Was he the only one who didn't know?

"The... whole time, really."

"Since she first came here? For over a year?" he pressed.

Zell's glance dropped to the floor. "Rin doesn't want to be a burden to you."

"She's not."

"Yeah, I know, but she feels like she is."

"She says that?"

"I..." Zell looked extremely uncomfortable. "I've already shot my mouth off enough. Let's leave it here, okay?"

Squall walked a few steps away from him, and stared into the undergrowth. This wasn't Zell's fault. It wasn't even Rinoa's, really. If anything, it was his own. What else had he been oblivious to?

Zell's footsteps followed him, hesitant at first. "Sorry, Squall."

"It's fine."

He felt Zell nudge at his arm. "Hey. How about we smash some T-Rexaur hide to blow off steam?"

"You know about Xu's rule, Zell."

She floated into his mind, printed spreadsheet in hand. _We can't afford to replace the Training Center's T-Rexaur stock more than once every quarter without going into the red. So that means T-Rexaurs are off limits to faculty members from now on. And that very much includes the Commander, by the way, Squall. We leave the dino to the cadets, since most of them can barely manage to stun one. Got it?_

Zell grinned. "Didn't say kill it, did I? I was talking about junctioning a bunch of Thundagas to attack and giving it a good ol' pounding. Watch it see stars, then leave it to fight another day. Everyone's a winner."

"That doesn't really work with a gunblade." The beast's head would be off within minutes, and Xu's rage would descend on Squall before he'd had time to clean off the blood.

"So use your fists."

Squall frowned as he tried to remember the last time he'd had a hand-to-hand combat class. He had been a junior cadet, surely. He'd selected the gunblade specialism at the age of thirteen, and barely fought with his fists since.

"See it as therapy. I've got a hundred Thundagas. Take fifty. Hell, use my gloves if you want." Zell pulled off his red Ehrgeiz gloves and thrust them under Squall's nose.

Squall slipped off and pocketed his own gloves, took Zell's, and put them on. The martial art gloves were an odd fit. Zell's palms were broader than Squall's, his fingers shorter. Squall flexed his hand, and watched as sparks of Thundaga crackled off the knuckles.

Zell's eyes gleamed. "Ready?"

Squall nodded, and Zell darted across the metal walkway to the upper level of the Training Center. When Squall had caught up, Zell let out a piercing whistle.

"Here, Rexy-rexy!"

Squall raised an eyebrow at the pet name, but said nothing.

The iron fencing at the edges of the clearing started to vibrate in synch with a heavy stomp that grew closer and closer, and a scaly red-brown head appeared from between two trees, baring a set of razor-sharp teeth.

Zell slammed the knuckles of one hand into the palm of the other. "Here she is. Let's go, baby."

He leapt towards the T-Rexaur and started pummeling its underbelly, while it screeched in outrage. Squall laid Lion Heart down at his feet, and followed Zell into the fray. He threw his first punch, and the visceral thrill he felt as his fist connected against the dinosaur's tough hide was deeply satisfying in a primal way. White-hot sparks flew from the Thundagas he had Drawn from Zell, and Squall lost himself in the task of beating a dinosaur into a state of unconsciousness.

When it was done, and the T-Rexaur keeled over, dazed but not critically damaged, Zell threw his head back and laughed at Squall, who was red-faced and panting.

"Pretty fun, huh?"

"Yeah," Squall admitted, and pulled Zell's gloves off to wipe the sweat off his forehead with the backs of his hands. He tossed the Ehrgeiz to Zell, who caught them deftly.

"I should probably head back, anyway," Zell said, shrugging. "Said I'd meet my girl tonight."

"You go ahead. I'll stay on my own for a while."

Zell winked at him. "Got a taste for fist-fighting now, huh?"

Squall picked up Lion Heart and shook some dirt off the hilt. "I want to get some gunblade practice in."

"Won't be much fun if you have to stick to Grats."

Squall shook his head. "It's not about the opponent. It's about the blade."

"I'd better leave you'n your blade to have some quality time together, then." Zell gave a SeeD salute, and a wide grin, and disappeared back down the walkway.

Squall spent the next half an hour or so in a kind of trance, one where Lion Heart led and he followed. As much as he'd enjoyed the experience of using his fists as a weapon, the methodical slicing, twisting and slashing of his gunblade was what he had been craving. He barely had to use any conscious thought: it was all muscle memory. A slash here. A turn there. Pulling the trigger at the exact moment.

He thought of Selphie, taking out monster after monster every day in Esthar, shrieking with delight as she totted up her extermination count. And she would soon be joined by Zell, who would enjoy himself thoroughly, no doubt. Squall gritted his teeth and tried to push down the rising sense of envy he felt towards his friends. _It would've been me, if..._

If he hadn't been pushed headfirst into leadership at the age of seventeen, and stuck in charge of the entire Garden ever since, the leaden weight of responsibility heavy on his shoulders.

Slash. _It should be me out there. _

Thwack. _Should be me._

He was in the furthest corner of the Training Center now, with his back to one of the huge metal pillars that stretched up to the high ceiling of the facility. The Grat in front of him snarled as tried to fling its gastric juices at Squall's face. He deflected with a swipe of Lion Heart, and the creature collapsed in defeat almost as soon as the blade made contact. Squall took a step back into the undergrowth as he withdrew the gunblade, and found himself tugging with irritation at his right leg, which was now caught tightly in a coiled vine.

A great, groaning creak sounded from overhead, and Squall glanced up to see the impossible sight of the top of the pillar giving way, the mass of the pillar now falling - fast - towards him. He pulled harder at his leg, as his brain frantically searched for an indication that this wasn't really happening. That he wasn't about to be crushed.

The vine snapped and released him, and he tried to roll away, but it was too late. The pillar was a split second away from him. His arms flew to his head as he braced himself for the impact.

White light drowned his vision, and Squall was knocked several feet sideways, some unseen force pushing the air out from his lungs. He drifted slowly, gently, down to the ground in what felt exactly like a Float spell - _a Float spell? Rin? _

She was there.

Slim arms closed tightly around his ribs, and she pressed her forehead into his chest, her breaths ragged against him. Squall instinctively cradled her shoulders, and thought distractedly how very cold her skin felt, skin that was barely covered by her paper-like white... scrubs...

He yanked his head back and looked at her face as the dazzling light faded, and she stared back at him, but all Squall saw was her scar.


	7. Chapter 7

Disclaimer: I make no claim whatsoever to the characters or world of Final Fantasy VIII, which is the property of Squaresoft/Square Enix.

* * *

**Chapter VII**

She was right there in his arms. Breathing. Solid. _Real._

Squall lowered his gaze down to meet hers, and was met with something unexpected. Not the dead eyes she had shown him each time he'd glimpsed her. He saw only love and longing in her face now. It was like a mask had been torn away, leaving only her. Rinoa.

"You're her, aren't you? I thought you weren't, but you are..." He tightened his grip on her body. "You just _are._"

She shook her head in an odd way, as if trying to dislodge water from her ear, and shrank back from him.

"Talk to me, Rin. I feel like I've been losing my mind these past few weeks."

She started to turn away, a distracted frown crinkling the line of her scar.

"Rin, please." He reached forwards and grabbed her shoulders. "Please!"

She made an exasperated sound against her teeth that was pure Rinoa, and said, "It's hard to answer when your sister is yelling her theories about 'temporal collapse' inside my head."

"Wha-?" He stared at her in incomprehension. "Elle? _Elle_'s sending you here? From the future? But... She can't be. You're solid."

Rinoa's eyes became unfocused, her expression distracted once again, and she gently removed his hands from her shoulders. "Just a moment, Squall."

She paced away from him, talking rapidly to herself in a low voice. "Stop lecturing me and let me speak to him. No, I won't. _No._ Things are already changing, and the universe is still standing. We'll deal with it."

Squall followed at her heels, trying to catch what she was saying.

"Elle," she snarled suddenly, "If you didn't realize I would gladly rip a hole in Time's ass for the chance to save him, then that was your mistake. Laguna knows it. You didn't really think his plan was just to collect evidence, did you? _This_ is why I'm here. It must be."

_Save me? _Whatever this was, it didn't sound good.

"Rin... I don't understand. Why can I see you? Touch you? Even Ultimecia couldn't take her own physical form into the past."

She crouched down to examine the pillar, with her back to him, and ran a finger along the dull metal surface.

"She was so close to working it out, you know. I saw her walk through a wall, back in Deling, when she was possessing Edea. If she'd just applied the same principle to walking out of Edea's body, she would have done what I'm doing now. It's a simple matter of using sorcery to step through a physical boundary." She gave a humorless half-laugh. "It's kind of funny that I'd be the one to figure it out rather than her. I mean, the most powerful sorceress of all time bested by _me._"

"There's nothing surprising about that at all, Rin. You always underestimate how powerful you are."

She didn't reply, and he knelt behind her and laid a palm on the flat of her back, the chill from her skin seeping through the thin cloth.

"Whose body did Elle send you to?" he asked, already expecting the answer.

"Sorry, my love. Yours."

"I thought I felt a... a kind of buzzing in my head."

"I wondered if you did. You kept stirring in your sleep."

"You said something about saving me. Saving me from what?"

She was silent for a moment, bowing her head over the pillar. "Elle thinks you shouldn't know anything about this, but you've already read between the lines, haven't you?"

He thought he had, but voicing it wasn't easy. "I... died?"

Rinoa turned to face him, and nodded. "Yes, my love, you did." Her voice cracked on the last word.

"Just now, under that pillar? Is that what was meant to happen?"

"No, it- It wasn't today."

_Not today._ "Okay, so how do I die?"

"Nobody knows. You were found, dead, on Garden premises. No sign of any wound. It happened when I wasn't here. I couldn't do anything to stop it." Her eyes were haunted, heavy with pain and guilt, and he reached out a hand to stroke her hair.

"All the security footage for that day was wiped. Laguna thinks you were betrayed by someone within Garden, and he came up with this plan to send me back to find out who." She shook her head, and he thought she was hearing his sister's voice again. "He needs to know. There has to be a chance, Elle."

"This is Laguna's doing?"

She nodded, and said quietly, "He's been a broken man since you died."

Squall felt a twinge of shame as he thought back to his last conversation with Laguna, how he had cut him off as soon as he broached the topic of their family connection. The idea of his father mourning him troubled Squall more than he was comfortable with.

"How far in the future are you coming from?" he asked. "You don't look any older."

Rinoa's scar twisted again as her brow furrowed. "I suppose I'm technically six months older, but I'm coming from seven years from now."

"What does that mean?"

"I've been frozen in the Sorceress Memorial for six and a half years."

"What? Why?"

Her gaze dropped to the sprawling weeds on the ground. "I… caused a lot of damage after you died. The world thought it would be safer with me locked up. I didn't have any reason to argue. I don't want to live in a world without you in it."

Squall took her hand in his, but she let it drop limply away.

"You're so cold, Rin." A sharp coolness lingered where he had touched her.

"I don't really feel it any more."

That dullness had crept back into her eyes, and it made Squall's heart ache. He reached out to let his fingers trail over her face. Her skin felt like smooth, cold marble. He lightly traced the line across her forehead with one index finger. It made no sense; nothing made any sense.

"Why do you have my scar?"

"It happened the moment you died. It just appeared." She brought her fingers up to meet his, and they followed the path of the scar together.

"Dr. Kadowaki and Edea think it's a manifestation of the Sorceress-Knight bond. Zell said his girlfriend found a description of it in an old book... 'Witch's Stigmata', or something. I didn't really listen." She gave a small shrug. "I always thought it meant that we're part of each other, even in death. That brought me a little comfort, even though it was hollow… you were gone. You _are_ gone."

Tears started to spill from her closed eyes, and she whispered, "I miss you. I miss you so much."

He wiped away one of her tears with his thumb, then bent his head to kiss her. No matter how icy cool her blue-tinged lips were, she tasted like his Rinoa. No, she _was _his Rinoa. Squall found himself deepening the kiss, and she reluctantly pushed him away.

"We probably shouldn't do this."

"Is this cheating?" A sudden sick feeling massed in the pit of his stomach. "Am I cheating on my Rinoa?"

She shot him a pitying glance. "She's me, Squall. I'd forgive myself. No, I mean, Ellone's watching everything I do here, so…" Rinoa screwed up her eyes and clutched at the front of his shirt. "You have no idea how much I want to feel you, alive, be with you like that just one more time…" She opened her eyes and looked at him, and the heat in her gaze stoked a fire in his blood. "You're every bit as beautiful as I remember you."

He kissed her again, and she returned his passion with wild abandon for a few moments before tearing herself away and turning her back to him.

"Okay Elle, I'll spare you any more of this. I've got a job to do here."

"Job?" His lips were almost numb from the coldness of hers, and the word barely came out.

"I'm trying to work out who killed you. Ellone was certain that we couldn't change the past, so at first, the purpose of this was just to know the truth. But here I am, interacting with you, and I think all ideas we had about influencing time are off the table now. Elle, I'm talking to you, too. I think there's a chance we can save his life. I've already changed the past. You both just saw me do it."

Squall looked down at the pillar, and felt a chill pass through him. "What was supposed to happen just now?"

"You broke your left leg and cracked three ribs. You were out of commission for a while. It _really _pissed you off. Dr. Kadowaki and I had to restrain you in the infirmary. You kept trying to check yourself out."

"That sounds like me."

The side of her mouth twitched at his interruption, but she continued. "At the time, we all assumed it was an accident, but given what happened later... I always thought this was your killer's first attempt. Squall. Did you see anything strange tonight? Anything at all?"

"No. There was no-one around." His mind was whirring back to her previous appearances. "That first time, when I found you in my office-"

Rinoa scuffed one foot against the ground, the dirt coating her white canvas slipper. She almost looked ashamed. "I'm sorry about that. I overreacted. I didn't know what to do, and Elle was screaming in my ear."

"Why didn't the cameras in the corridor pick you up? I checked all the footage, and you weren't on it."

"I had to make myself solid to touch your computer. Up until then, I wouldn't have been detectable."

"I thought I dreamt you."

"That's what I was hoping for."

"I thought I was going _insane_, Rin." He couldn't help pressing the point, and she started to look irritated.

"Well, I wasn't hoping for that, obviously. Squall, I'm sorry, all right?"

Her snapped apology made her sound more like Rinoa than ever, and that filled him with reassurance. "What were you doing at my computer?"

"I've been checking through the security logs for the last few weeks."

"And?"

She twisted her top lip in dissatisfaction. "So far, there's no-one in Garden who shouldn't be here."

"The spell you had around you, when I tried to get close to you, like a force-field... what was that?"

"Oh, that?" She shrugged. "That was just a Super-Shell."

"A what?"

"A high-level Shell combined with Protect and Reflect. I made it up. I guess I haven't learned how to do that yet?"

"No. I'd only ever seen something like that when you were... you know." He broke eye contact. "At the Lunar Base."

"Ohh... I'm sorry if it freaked you out." She was contrite now, and reached out a cool hand to touch his arm. "You thought I was Ultimecia?"

"No, but... I didn't know what was happening."

"Have you talked about this with anyone? Who knows that you've seen me?"

"Just you. I mean, the other you. She thinks I've been dreaming. She's been going through a lot of her own things at the moment, I didn't want to-"

Rinoa closed her eyes. "Oh. Of course." She gave a small sigh. "I hated myself for that, afterwards. The way I wasted the last weeks and months I could have had with you, obsessing about myself... But it was important, in a way. I needed to think about who I was, what would be left of me if you weren't there..."

He couldn't stand to hear this. "Rin..."

She looked up at him sadly. "Be nice to her, okay? She might not have long left with you."

"Rin, I... I don't want any of this to happen to you. I love you."

"I love you too." She whispered it into his chest as he drew her into a tight embrace. He held her as closely as he could, determined to warm up her small, icy body. To keep her here with him, to protect her from ever returning to the Memorial and a future where he had somehow failed to keep his vows, abandoning both her and his own life.

He did not know how long they stood there, just that it could never be long enough. With his face buried in her hair, he did not hear the quiet footsteps that approached, and neither did she.

"Squall?" said a small, plaintive voice behind them, and both Squall and Rinoa froze.

"What's going on?" said the voice, and Squall turned his head to see his girlfriend standing at the edge of the wooden boardwalk, her face stricken.

The Rinoa who was still in Squall's arms had shut her eyes tightly. "I'll have to leave you to explain this. I can't be here with... me._ Her._ I feel like if I even look at her, the universe will collapse on itself."

Squall understood how she felt. He recalled the wild disorientation he had experienced when he came out of Time Compression in the wrong era, and realized that the little boy in front of him was none other than his younger self. When the child had stared at him with round, fearful eyes and asked Matron who "that man" was, he had been paralyzed with dread.

He could feel the older Rinoa begin to tremble violently against his arms. "Elle, aren't you listening? Cut the connection, quickly!" she said, panic rising in her voice, and his arms closed on nothingness as she vanished before his eyes.

Rinoa, his Rinoa, padded slowly towards him, her footsteps almost silent against the soft earth.

"Was that me?"

"Yes."

"Is this some kind of time travel thing?"

"It seems so. I just found that out. But I've been seeing her for a while-"

She twisted her mouth into a crooked smile. "Is that why you were so distant before I left? Because you've been having an affair with Future-me?"

"What!? No!" he said hotly. "This is the first time I've talked to her!"

She look at him skeptically, and he started to explain in stuttered terms what the other Rinoa had told him.

Her eyes widened in horror halfway through, and she brought a hand to her mouth. "You're going to die?"

"Maybe. I don't know." He didn't really want to think about that right now. "Rin. The reason I was acting distant was because I thought you were being possessed again. I'm sorry."

"Possessed?"

"I kept seeing her when I knew you were asleep in bed. I thought it was some other sorceress borrowing your body… Then I saw her when you were there, too, and I didn't know what to think-"

"Wow." She folded her arms and stared at the ground. He'd wounded her, he knew.

"Yeah. Sorry I haven't trusted you."

"I'm sorry I didn't trust you either. When I said you and she were… you know."

He flushed. "I did kiss her. Just now." Rinoa raised an eyebrow at him. "You- she was so heartbroken, I couldn't stand it. So I kissed her." He looked at her nervously. "Is that cheating?"

She considered him through long lashes, and he had a feeling she was enjoying his discomfort. "Seeing as it's me, I guess I'll let you off."

"She said you'd say that."

"Seems I know myself pretty well, then." She stepped forward and snaked her arms around his waist, and he leaned into the hug with relief.

Rinoa broke away and looked up at him, a hint of that old impishness in her expression. "Tongues?"

Squall blinked. "Excuse me?"

"I mean, what kind of kiss was it?"

"Oh. Uh, yeah." He felt heat creeping across his cheeks. "Tongues... were involved."

"Hmm. I still forgive you." She leaned in and said slyly, "Hey Squall… two of me at the same time… would you?"

He spluttered briefly and brought his hands to her hips, squeezing her in admonishment. "I can't _believe _you put that image in my mind."

"You would though, wouldn't you?"

"You're such a bad girl," he growled into the nape of her neck. "This is serious, Rin. I might be about to die soon."

She pushed his hands off and gazed at him, determination blazing in her eyes. "Then we've got to do everything we can to change it. Now I know about it too, maybe I can do something to stop it happening."

"Maybe. Rin, why are you here? In the Training Center?"

"Oh." Her face fell. "Zell came to find me. He told me what you two were talking about. He came to apologize, really, but I'm not mad at him. To be honest, it's kind of a relief that you finally know."

"You shouldn't have kept something like that from me."

She scuffed her boot against the dirt, just as her counterpart had minutes earlier. "I thought... You've got enough to worry about, you know?"

"Tell me who's been saying those things, and I'll make sure they're disciplined." He felt hot anger rising up again.

Rinoa gave a small, bitter laugh. "You can't discipline the whole school, Squall."

"It's that bad?"

"Pretty much. I'm used to it by now. I just... I don't belong here. That's been clear for a long time."

The resignation on her face pained him. _But you belong with me. I belong with you._

"We... should be together," he said.

She nodded. "We should. I won't leave again. Whoever it is that's trying to kill you, they'll have to go through me."

"Don't say that. What if you're the one that dies? I couldn't go on without you, Rin."

"Squall... We're going to get through this." She stood on tiptoes and kissed him on the lips, and her warmth dispelled the residual cold that still lingered there.

"I really need to be with you right now," she murmured as she broke away.

Squall patted her shoulder in what he hoped was a reassuring way. "I'm not going anywhere. Don't worry."

She exhaled impatiently. "No, I mean, we need to get back to your quarters and _be together_. Urgently, Squall. Or we can settle for the cadets' make-out area, but I don't think you're that much of an exhibitionist."

"Oh. Damn. Yes. I... need that too."

"I promise not to cry this time."

She had that glint in her eyes, the one that made all his blood run south in anticipation.

_God_, how he'd missed it.

The elevator was blessedly empty, and Squall made the most of it by pushing Rinoa against the wall and kissing her fiercely, his free hand working its way up her inner thigh. When the doors opened and they stumbled out onto the third floor, she had already undone the buckles on two of his belts, and he fleetingly wondered if the surveillance camera in the corridor would pick up his state of dishevelment as he pulled her into the Commander's quarters.

They did not make it as far as the bed, and the pure joy and sense of belonging he felt in his release as she convulsed against him brought Squall home, home to Rinoa and home to himself, and he knew that he would let nothing, not even death, tear him away from her.

* * *

A/N: ...Let's assume that Garden's elevator doesn't have security cameras. Or maybe Squall just doesn't care at this point... #priorities

So - the reveal, at last. I'm very curious to know what you thought. It was probably pretty easily guessable, despite my clumsy attempts to place various red herrings and other fishy obfuscations. Well, there's still a couple more mysteries to come...

Squall will learn a little more about Witch's Stigmata later on, by the way, if Future-Rinoa's explanation of her scar seems rather inadequate. She doesn't know or care all that much about it.

Those of you who have already read my other multi-chapter Squinoa fic Eye of the Storm (spoilers follow, although only for Chapter 1) might notice some similarities between this plot point and the first chapter of that story. And you'd be right, because Angel's Scar started as an offshoot from the very beginning of EotS, where Laguna suggests freezing Rinoa in the memorial after Squall's death. Although Rinoa managed to talk him out of that idea (and that fic went in a _very _different direction...), I started thinking "Well, what if they'd done that?", and this story began to take shape. I should point out that the circumstances of Squall's (alleged) demise in Angel's Scar are definitely not taken from EotS. Anyway. Hopefully the two fics are sufficiently different for you guys to overlook my reuse of ideas. I can kind of imagine the reader thinking "ah jeez, she's gone and killed Squall off again and Rinoa's trying to fix it with time travel, _again._" This is the last time though, honest. He can stay alive in my next fic! - colobonema


	8. Chapter 8

Disclaimer: I make no claim whatsoever to the characters or world of Final Fantasy VIII, which is the property of Squaresoft/Square Enix.

* * *

**Chapter VIII**

Once the initial shock had worn off, Squall found that the knowledge of his supposed death did not really bother him. He had been fully aware of the cheapness of his own life since he was a junior cadet; he'd grown up knowing that the next battle might be his last. But the idea of Rinoa, ice-cold and trapped forever in the Sorceress Memorial while the world continued to turn and all their friends aged and died... He couldn't handle it.

Then again, future-Rinoa had already prevented his broken leg and ribs, hadn't she? If that could be changed, so could everything else. Squall decided he was satisfied with telling himself that, and set about trying to answer the other questions that were pulling at his mind.

His first port of call was the Garden library, where Zell's girlfriend Amelie greeted him cheerfully at the counter.

"Good morning, Commander. Can I help with something?"

"I want to find a reference for a particular term related to sorcery."

"Oh, right. Well, what is it?"

"Witch's stigmata."

"Hmm." Amelie wrinkled her freckled nose. "I've read about that somewhere. I think it's in the High Dolletian Imperial Records. I'm not sure which volume, though. Can you wait while I run an index check?"

She tapped at the keyboard of her computer, then trotted off to the rearmost bookcase, which Squall vaguely remembered to be the history and geography section. Amelie returned with a dark green leather-bound tome, as thick as Squall's wrist, and laid it carefully on the counter.

"The pages are super delicate because it's so old. We're supposed to wear gloves with this one." She took a thin pair of white cotton gloves from the drawer under the counter, slipped them over her hands, and gently turned the gilt-edged pages until she reached a section near the end of the volume. "It starts there, at the bottom." She rotated the book so that Squall could read the text.

_Witch's Stigmata refers to the comparatively rare phenomenon of bleeding, scars or wounds on a Sorceress in a site corresponding to an existing injury on her deceased Knight. There is no consensus among scholars as to why Stigmata only occurs within certain Sorceress-Knight Bonds. While folklore usually attributes Stigmata to be caused by the strength of the Bond in a romantic sense, the phenomenon remains unexplained._

Squall frowned and turned the page carefully with his own leather-gloved hands. He was filled with an odd feeling, an image of human history stretching out before him, strewn with the corpses of dead knights and grieving, scarred sorceresses. How many times had his and Rinoa's story played out in the past? Countless times, maybe, and yet he was unwilling to entertain the idea that any knight had loved their sorceress as wholly as he loved Rinoa. The bloodied, mangled knights of past centuries grinned their rictus grins at him, suddenly his rivals for the woman who Squall would lay his own life down for in a heartbeat. He blinked them away and continued reading.

_The most famous case of Witch's Stigmata is that of Andrasta, the feared warrior-witch of Northwestern Galbadia, who Bonded with a total of seven Knights during her lifetime. The sixth Knight, Taranis, was said to be her only true love. Upon his death in battle by a dragoon's lance, Andrasta bled heavily along the left side of her torso in an identical pattern to Taranis' fatal wound. The scar remained visible on Andrasta's body for the duration of her life. _

_Andrasta became extremely volatile in the aftermath of Taranis' death. Her magical powers also increased remarkably, a fact which Andrasta herself attributed to her burning rage against the fates for claiming her lover. She led several more brutal raids against neighboring peoples, conquering the entire Rem Archipelago, and it was only a platonic Bonding with her younger brother Camulos, her seventh and final Knight, that eventually calmed her bloodthirst. _

Great. So the other Rinoa was presumably not only more powerful, but also incredibly angry. Not a good combination. Squall could understand why future-Laguna had taken the decision to seal her in the Sorceress Memorial. Part of him was selfishly glad that nobody had attempted to force a replacement knight on her. He didn't want to imagine Rinoa seeking comfort from another man, filling her grief with newfound affection and companionship. Perhaps from a knight who was better at expressing himself, warmer with his emotions than Squall could ever be. Maybe-

Amelie leaned across the counter, interrupting his thoughts. "Did you find what you needed?"

He nodded, and she peered down at the page.

"Interesting stuff, huh? I love all that premodern folklore. I've been getting Zell into historical novels recently. He's already read all of the _Dawn of the Holy Empire _series..."

He let her chatter wash over him without really listening. Amelie had a sweet, soothing voice, the complete tonal opposite of Zell's. They complemented each other well, Squall thought. He wondered if Zell had already told her he would soon be leaving for Esthar.

Squall started to turn over the other weight on his mind: the question of who could be trying to kill him. Someone with a grudge against SeeD, and possibly a personal vendetta against Squall himself. Someone so familiar with Garden's layout and security measures that they could slip in and out undetected.

There was one immediate candidate, whose arrogant leer flashed straight into Squall's mind.

He stepped back, abruptly, and Amelie looked at him in confusion.

"I'd better go. Thanks."

* * *

Xu did not look up from her computer when he approached. "Come in properly or piss off back to your own office. Don't hang around the door like a bad smell, Squall. You know I can't stand it."

He'd suffered worse greetings from her in the past, so Squall chose not to comment. He slipped inside the cramped room, closing the door behind him.

"What's our current report status on Seifer's whereabouts?"

She carried on typing. "You're shit out of luck if you want information on Almasy. Last sighting was more than six months ago, in West Trabia. Working on the docks in a fishing village in Eldbeak Peninsula with Fujin and Raijin. Could be anywhere by now, though."

"Got it. Was there anything out of place at the training center yesterday? Before Zell and I got there?"

"Not as far as I know. There was barely anyone there by the time Quistis and I chased the last of the cadets out at nine-thirty. This is about the pillar, right?"

He nodded, and Xu's face soured. Squall knew he hadn't been entirely let off the hook for the incident, despite writing a detailed and almost entirely false report that omitted any mention of a time-traveling version of his girlfriend. Xu could not forgive him for the fact that the pillar had collapsed in one of the three areas of the Training Center that were out of shot of the surveillance cameras. He was half-sure that she was harboring a suspicion that he'd sabotaged the pillar in a petty attempt to send the budget spreadsheet into disarray. At least she'd rescinded her initial threat to take the repairs out of Squall's wages.

"Mm."

"And the two questions are related?"

When he didn't answer, she gave him a withering look. "Squall. Do you honestly think Seifer snuck back into Garden so he could dispatch you with a loose piece of architecture?"

"Not really, but I'd feel happier if I could rule the possibility out."

"If he's here, he's somehow made it past every single security camera. Look, I have no information or opinion on whether Seifer wants to kill you. But I'm pretty sure that if he did, he wouldn't be able to stand back and let a pillar take the credit for it."

"Maybe."

"_Definitely_, Squall. He'd want to gloat in your face first. That'd be at least half of the fun of it for him."

"Yeah." He wasn't entirely convinced, but let the topic drop. "Xu. If you wanted to kill me, how would you do it?"

She picked up a ballpoint pen and chewed on the end of it, a habit that Squall found intensely annoying. "Interesting question. I'm not fool enough to think I could beat you in a straight fight, so I'd have to get pretty sneaky. Hmm." Her eyes lit up. "Poison dart to the kidneys while you're ass-deep in paperwork at your desk."

"Thanks. I'll keep that in mind."

"So will I."

She flashed a rare grin, white teeth gleaming, and he raised an eyebrow.

"Hey, I need something to entertain myself during those long night shifts in the Mission Coordination room," she said.

Squall ignored her and leaned his shoulder against the overflowing bookshelf as he worked out how to phrase his next question. "Look, I'm presuming you know that... that the cadets hate Rinoa."

"Yup."

So everyone had seen it, except him. He directed his glare to the top of his boots. "Do you think any of them are serious enough about hating Rinoa to want to hurt her? Or me, for being with her?"

"They're just kids, Squall. Kids like to see the world in black and white." She shrugged. "The heroic SeeDs versus the big bad witch. That's how they make sense of the world, by putting things in boxes. And Rinoa throws a curveball into that, d'you see? She won't stay in her little box, and it makes them feel unsafe."

"She'd never hurt any of them," he cut in angrily.

"Not because they're scared of _her_. The fact that she's on our side messes up their sense of order. Makes 'em wonder what else they're wrong about. The whole stack of boxes comes falling down." Xu pushed her chair back from the desk and shook out her hair. "That's kids for you. Wait a few years for their brains to mature enough to see the world in a million different shades, and a good half of them will cringe when they remember what little shits they were."

"What about the other half?"

"Those are the ones you give menial mission-work to, and make damn sure they never get in a position of authority."

Squall blinked. Had Xu always been this insightful, and he'd never noticed?

She was watching his face with mildly sardonic interest. "I've seen a lot of cadets grow up over the years. You included, remember."

"So... you're saying I was one of the good ones?"

Xu's eyes narrowed. "Don't push it, Commander."

"Alright. Anyone on staff I should be worried about?"

That question seemed to take her aback. "None of the faculty have ever given me reason to suspect them of something like that. Come on, Squall. Nobody knows for sure how old this place really is. Sure, Centran engineering is still amazing, but nothing's impervious to wear and tear. The parts will need replacing eventually. You just got unlucky."

_Unlucky. _Squall mulled the idea over as he made his way back to his own office. Perhaps she was right. He had no evidence.

* * *

He made an effort to return to his quarters before Rinoa went to sleep, and joined her on the sofa while she read a chapter of her book, her eyes scanning the pages rapidly.

"What did you do today?" he asked.

Rinoa looked up in surprise. "You never ask me that."

"I figured it was time I started. So tell me."

She closed the book and placed it the arm of the sofa. "Promise you won't zone out and start thinking about the Garden accounts?"

"There is absolutely no way that will happen," he assured her.

"Well, In the morning I took Angelo out to the forest by the Rinauld Coast, like I do every day, and-"

"Every day?"

"Just about, yeah. Then we came back around lunch, so I-"

"How long were you there for?"

"About three hours. Same as usual."

"You go to the Rinauld forest for three hours every day? Why there?" His questions were starting to sound like an interrogation, and Rinoa shrunk away from him.

"Well, Angelo really loves it, and... It reminds me of the woods I used to take her walking in when we lived in Timber. There's no-one else around to bother us, and... I just like it there."

Squall knew what Rinoa looked like when she was was being evasive, and that was now. He watched her eyes flick to her fingertips, and a realization hit with full clarity.

"You go there to practice your magic," he told her.

Downcast eyes and a dull flush on her cheeks confirmed that he was right.

"How long have you known?" She looked miserable.

"About five seconds."

"Oh." Her shoulders relaxed a little. "Well, I can't use it here in Garden, can I? And I feel like... I feel like I'll go crazy if I don't let it out. It's only defensive spells, Squall. I promise. I'm not setting fire to the trees or anything."

"Okay. What defensive spells?"

A small, secretive smile grew at the corners of her lips. "I've been figuring out how to combine Shell with Protect. I've almost got it working. I'm going to try to put Reflect in there, too. I've got a name for it and everything."

He couldn't help it. "Super-Shell. Right?"

"How did you-" She pulled a face. "Oh... The other me told you. Here I was, hoping to impress you, and she's already taken the credit."

He picked up her socked foot and tickled the sole lightly. "Feeling competitive? She's you, Rin."

"Well I am, a little. Like she's spurring me on to fight harder. For you." She wriggled her foot out of his hands and laid both legs across his lap. "I'm not going to let you die. You'd better remember that."

"I will. Okay, so you trained in the forest in the morning. What did you do afterwards?"

"I had a late lunch with Quistis once the cafeteria emptied out, then I took some books back to the library, and I've just been in here since then."

"Does that happen a lot? I mean, lunch with Quistis?"

"Most days, I guess. Recently, anyway. We've become a lot closer while Selphie's been away. Quistis... We used to clash, but... She's really been there for me. She always listens, even though when I'm saying is really unimportant."

It's not unimportant." He frowned. "And I should be the one doing that."

"Come on, you barely get the chance to leave your office for lunch. Quistis doesn't have quite the same responsibilities. She's got time to hear me ramble on."

"I don't like the feeling that she knows more about your life than I do," he admitted. Jealousy was prodding at him again, and it made him want to reclaim his territory.

"That's not... it's not comparable, Squall. She doesn't know me in the same way as you."

Rinoa swung her legs off his lap, and brought her hands to his face. "No one does. And no one ever will."

She kissed him, and the sweetness of her lips doused the possessive heat that had been spreading in his chest. Squall started to talk about what he had read in the library, about Andrasta and Taranis, witch's stigmata, and his bitter reaction to the idea of Rinoa taking another knight.

"I could never have another knight. Surely you know that."

"If it was for your survival-"

"I already told you, when we made the oath. If I have to take a sword to the heart, it has to be yours. No-one else's."

"It won't come to that," he vowed.

Rinoa held his gaze with solemn eyes for a long moment, then closed them and whispered, "I'm willing to take your sword in other places, though." Squall felt her fingertips trailing their way down to his crotch.

Something welled and bubbled up inside Squall, and it was only when it released that he recognized it as laughter. He wrapped his arms around Rinoa's shoulders, muffling his laughter in her neck, feeling her chest shudder as she started to laugh too.

"Whaaat?" she demanded in between breaths. "Was that creepy? I was going for sexy."

"It was a little bit... Irvine."

She rolled out of his embrace, dismayed. "Yeesh. That's a passion-killer."

Squall leaned down to trap her between his forearms, and ran a finger softly down the side of her face. "I haven't seen you laugh for a long while."

"Well, I haven't seen you laugh... pretty much _ever._"

"Yeah. It feels good, though."

"Mm. You know what else feels good?" Her hand was sneaking back under his belt.

He could feel himself smirking as he slid his fingers up her back to find the clasp of her bra. "I already got the message, Rin."

* * *

She fell asleep afterwards, and Squall debated carrying her to the bed, but instead decided to bring the quilt to the sofa. She curled her body into him as lay back down beside her, and snuggled into his chest, her breath warm against his skin.

He looked down at her sleeping face in the dim light. The little frown was still there, softened perhaps. But on her lips, he saw the beginnings of a smile.

* * *

A/N: The names in the history book Squall read might be familiar if you have an interest in British/Celtic mythology. Andrasta was a goddess of war, who the British warrior-queen Boudicca prayed to before battle. Her name means "invincible one". Taranis was a god of rain, thunder and storms (or a squall, perhaps... _subtle aren't I_). Camulos was a war god, an equivalent of Mars. I'm British, by the by. While I haven't lived there for a long time, and I habitually write with US English for day job reasons, I'm sure the occasional Britishism creeps into my stories... I probably end up with a strange hodgepodge of American spellings and vocab with an underlying British turn of phrase.


	9. Chapter 9

Disclaimer: I make no claim whatsoever to the characters or world of Final Fantasy VIII, which is the property of Squaresoft/Square Enix.

* * *

**Chapter IX**

The other Rinoa was there during the night, he was certain. He felt the now-familiar buzzing sensation as he was drifting in and out of sleep. She was there for a while, a gentle cool presence soothing him back to sleep, and then at some point in the early hours he felt a light pressure against the inside of his skull as she pushed through him, stepped out of his body and slipped out of the room. She had returned by the time his morning alarm sounded, and while his own Rinoa smiled at him over the breakfast table, he could still feel her future counterpart inside his head, listening and watching in silence.

He took his time over the coffee and toast Rinoa had prepared, and left for his office considerably later than usual. Paperwork was piling up, a backlog of messages was waiting, and... he didn't care. Squall was barely surprised at how little he cared right now about the responsibilities others had decided for him. If things went how they were supposed to, and he died, some other sap would have to be Commander soon anyway, he reasoned. If there was a good time to stop giving a damn, it was now.

By the time he was settled at his desk in mid-morning, it was approaching nightfall in Esthar. Selphie's weekly report would be due any moment. Squall scolded himself. He cared about Selphie. He cared about the people who were relying on him. He just didn't care about being the one in charge any more.

Selphie's videophone ID number raced across the monitor, and he accepted the call. Her face expanded to fill the screen, her brown curls bouncing as she tilted her head towards the camera.

"Hi, Squall! How're you? How are things in Garden?"

"Nothing new," he lied. "Selphie, the Esthar administration want you to stay on for a further rotation."

Selphie teeth flashed brightly as she beamed her delight at his announcement. "Great! I was hoping they might. We're having such a blast here. I got my hundredth Behemoth kill yesterday. Single-handed, by the way." She stretched her arms behind her head, her smile a picture of satisfaction.

"Good for you." He tried to ignore the way his fingers twitched, itching for the heat of combat. "I'm switching out some of your squad members, but I want to keep the old ones in place alongside their replacements until after the supermoon. You'll probably need the extra numbers."

"Yeah, good thinking. We've got some plans in place for extra patrols around then, by the way. The Palace sent us a backup stock of para-magic straight from O-Lab so we could get ready. They refreshed our ammunition for free, too. I know you don't like it when I tell you how awesome your dad is, but Laguna is seriously _so_ incredibly-"

"Mm. Right," Squall said curtly. He had no desire to encourage this sort of thing. "Listen, Selphie. Kiros told me that the aerial monsters are the largest remaining group now."

"Yeah, we're on it. No worries."

"More long-range support would be useful, though. I was thinking about sending Irvine. How would you feel about that?"

Selphie's demeanor transformed as the cheerful light in her eyes faded, and her shoulders tensed. "Why're you asking me? We're just friends."

Squall knew he was supposed to tread lightly here; he just wasn't sure how to. "Irvine would like to be more though, right?" he ventured.

She screwed up her face. "Ugh. Has he been talking to you? We made a deal that we won't-"

"Selphie, I'm not interested in getting involved in your private life. I just need to know that there won't be any uncomfortable situations in any of my SeeD squads out there. I won't force Irvine on you if you want to avoid him." She gave him a pixelated glare, but remained stubbornly silent, so he continued. "I'm going to make this your call. Do you want me to put Irvine on your team, or on Zell's?"

She pursed her lips. "I'll only answer this on the condition that Irvy never hears about it."

Squall cleared his throat. "You're coming dangerously close to insulting me."

"Okay, okay, sorry." She looked worried now. "Commander," she added as an afterthought.

"Just answer the question."

Selphie's eyes drifted off to the side of the screen for a few moments, then she said resolutely, "Mine. Put him on my team."

"Got it." Squall knew he was smirking, and made no effort to straighten his face.

"And don't tell him-"

"Goodbye, Selphie." He couldn't help enjoying her panicked expression as he cut the call without affirming her request. It might do Selphie good, he thought, to come to terms with her feelings for once. Hell, at least it would cheer Irvine up. Squall was getting sick of seeing the sharpshooter looking so grumpy all the damn time.

In the back of his mind, he felt a cool amusement that was not his own, and he had the impression that a smile was twitching at the future Rinoa's frozen lips.

"Are you here?" he said out loud. "You are, aren't you?"

Something pressed against him, and the surface of his body rippled as she walked free, her translucent form solidifying instantly in front of him.

"You felt me, then."

"Yeah. Since last night." Squall reached out to touch her arm, savoring the iciness of her skin. "Why didn't you say anything?"

Rinoa shivered. "I couldn't come out when the other me was there. If she spoke to me, or touched me... I just can't do it."

"So you've just been knocking around my head?"

"Pretty much. It's been nice. It's a lot quieter in there than in mine." She met his smile, then turned her eyes downwards. "She looks happier. The other me."

"We both are. We're... being more honest with each other, I think."

"Good. That's good." She twisted her mouth wistfully. "The look on her face this morning, when you were still sleeping... I wished it was me. It's a strange feeling, being jealous of yourself."

"Rin, I..."

"I'm not asking you to give me what you've been giving her, Squall. I know it's not right."

"Not with my Sis watching, that's for sure."

A light flush brought color to Rinoa's sallow cheeks, and she grimaced. "I won't repeat what she just said."

"Elle. I want to talk to you." He slid his fingers under Rinoa's chin, and stared hard into her eyes, willing his gaze to somehow reach his sister. "I've got no intention of dying, okay? I want to make that very clear."

Rinoa blinked, her eyes unfocused. "She says, nobody ever does."

"We're going to change what happened. Me and Rinoa. And the universe is just going to have to take it." He softened his stare and pulled his hand back. "What does she say now?"

Rinoa gave a wry half-smile. "That you and I are as bad as each other. She sounds kind of proud, though. She misses you too. It's been eight years for her. She... She says you look so young."

"I'm going to make damn sure she sees me get older." He frowned. "Eight? You said seven years, before."

"Mm. That was a few months ago."

"This is taking months?"

"Sending me back drains Elle's powers. We think it's partly because I've been moving around outside of your body. And now it's worse, maybe because of all the changes I'm making in the past. She can't use her powers again for a while afterwards. It's getting longer each time."

Her gaze drifted to the now-blank computer monitor, and she said quietly, "It was good to see Selphie's face."

"I suppose it's been a while for you."

She nodded. "Elle told me she... Selphie, she comes to visit me every month. At the Memorial, I mean. She talks to me through the glass. I've never even known she was there. Not once, in eight years."

Her eyes were glassy, and he reached forward to squeeze her shoulders.

"Did you find anything? When you were out and about last night?"

"No."

"Rin, I think... The only person I can think of who'd want to kill me is Seifer."

She looked at him wide-eyed for a second, then shook her head firmly. "It wasn't Seifer. We can be sure of that."

"Why?"

"Because Garden knew exactly where he was when you died. It was while he was... oh. I guess none of that has happened yet." Rinoa tilted her head in the way she did when Ellone was talking. "Look, it wasn't Seifer. He took the news about you really hard, Elle says."

Squall was skeptical at this, and raised an eyebrow.

"He never wished you dead, my love. Try to believe it."

"He could've fooled me." Squall flinched at the memory of the electrocution Seifer had forced on him, at just how close the unrelenting jolts had come to overloading his heart. The sneer on Seifer's face as he'd done it.

"The Seifer after the war was different to the one you remember. He was kind of... quiet."

A quiet Seifer was the most unlikely idea yet, but Rinoa's face was so solemn that he felt compelled to accept it. "Well, Seifer's my only hunch. I've got nothing else. So if not him, then who?"

"I don't know yet. That's why I'm here. I'm going to find them and stop it happening."

"Why don't you just go to the day when it happened?" He blinked, his throat suddenly dry. "...Is it today? Is that why you're here?"

"No, it's-"

She vanished suddenly, and Squall stared at the empty space in front of him, his mouth half-open. Then Rinoa flickered and reappeared, a chastised expression on her face.

"Elle cut the connection. She doesn't think you should know when it happens. And I'm only allowed back here on the condition I don't tell you." She scowled. "She's got quite a talent for coercive control, your sister."

He felt himself glare, once again swept up in the odd feeling of trying to reach his sister through his girlfriend's eyes. "Why don't I deserve to know, Elle?"

"She says she refuses to make you live with the knowledge of exactly how long you have left. That the human mind can't cope with that kind of-"

"How would she know?"

"She's got all kinds of theories." Rinoa eyebrows drew together. "She's going to cut me off again if we don't drop this topic. But let me say- no, let me say it, Elle- the day it happened... we _will _go there. We have to. We just... neither of us were ready, at first. To watch it happen. And now we think there might be a chance to change it, well... we have to be as prepared as possible. Find any information we can first. We'll only get one shot at it. Elle can't send me to the same moment twice. I'm..." She swallowed. "I'm not ready to face it yet. What if I fail? What if I can't do anything?"

Squall circled her thin waist with his hands and let her lean in towards him, soaking up his warmth. "You won't. It's you, Rin. I believe in you."

She made a muffled sound, halfway between a sob and a chuckle, into his shoulder. "You sound exactly like your dad."

"What?"

"Laguna's become... relentlessly optimistic about it all since I saved you from the pillar. Give that man the smallest glimmer of hope and he's... well, _terrifying._ He's certain we can change what happened now."

"I think he's right. We can." He wasn't sure how confident he felt, but he faked it, for her. Squall stroked her hair slowly, and as he did so a disturbing question arose in his mind. "But what will happen to you, Rin? If we change things, you wouldn't have been frozen in the first place. Will you just cease to exist?"

"I have no idea. Elle doesn't either. That might be what happens. Or I might change with the timeline. I might suddenly wake up next to you seven years from now. That would be..." She bit her lip, and the longing in her eyes almost overwhelmed him. "But look, it doesn't matter. Whatever happens to me, it's worth it to bring you back."

"How can you say that? You might die!"

"I'm as good as dead anyway. I lost it all when I lost you. I injured people, I blasted a whole wing off the Garden. My body's frozen solid in the Memorial. Laguna and Ellone unfreeze me for a couple of hours every few weeks or months to go back in time to find you. It's... it's not exactly a life, Squall. I don't care if I lose it."

He pulled her in close, and tilted her chin with his thumb to kiss her. She pushed his hand away and buried her face in his chest.

"Don't."

"I love you. I always have, and I always will." Her ear was cool against his lips as he spoke, and she shuddered with each word.

"Please, Squall. Don't. I just can't-"

Her words were lost in the tears that trickled down her face. Squall kissed each tear away, then lowered his mouth to her cold lips. Rinoa responded hungrily, her fire unleashed, and her icy fingers raked across his scalp, making him shiver as his hands slid under her flimsy white top. Squall pressed against her, holding her captive between his hips and the edge of his desk. She gasped softly as he moved his kisses down to her pale neck and her throat, each taste of her skin numbing his lips, a delicious cold that he knew he wanted more of. He started to pull the top of her scrubs up her torso, revealing her naked skin underneath, inch by inch.

She vanished without warning, and he lurched forward onto the desk, slamming his hands down to regain balance.

"Squall, come on," said an impatient female voice outside his door.

Quistis. Knocking. _Shit. _How long had she been knocking? He rubbed his frozen lips with his fingers in an attempt to thaw them, and tried to force out words.

"Hang on."

Squall adjusted the crotch of his pants, sternly commanding his lingering arousal to dissipate, and arranged himself on the chair. He pressed the button to unlock the door, and it slid open to reveal an unimpressed Quistis clutching a large blue file.

"Okay, come in," he said unnecessarily. She was already halfway across the room.

She set the file down on the desk. "I've brought the list of recommended cadets for the next field exam."

"Thanks."

"Have you decided on a destination yet?"

He hadn't. Squall had not had the mental space to give the matter any thought. "I was thinking about sending them to Esthar for a week to join the monster clean-up squads," he improvised. "Assess them on their extermination record over the whole seven days. We should wait until the supermoon's passed, though."

"Hmm." She gave him that infuriating look that signaled neither agreement nor disapproval. "Speaking of Esthar, Xu told me you stamped dispatch orders for Zell and Irvine."

She looked somewhat annoyed to have been told by Xu, he thought. Had Quistis wanted him to run it by her first? SeeD dispatch wasn't part of the Headmistress' remit.

"Is that a problem, Quistis?"

She sighed. "I'll miss them, that's all. I wish... Well, you know. I wish we could be going too."

Squall slid the file over and held it in his hands, staring at it blankly. He felt unreasonably irritated to hear his own desires coming from Quistis. "This is our role now. We just have to accept it."

He glanced up at her. Her expression was resigned. She met his eyes suddenly with a shrewd look.

"Was there someone in here when I knocked?"

"I was on the phone."

"I thought I heard Rinoa."

He kept his eyes firmly on the file. "Yeah, she was on speaker."

"You know, Squall, she seems a lot better since she came back from Timber."

His jaw tightened. Right now, he definitely did not want to hear Quistis' opinions on Rinoa.

"Yeah."

"Maybe trips to Timber should be a regular thing. It's done her so much good. I think-"

"Quistis, why are you trying to involve yourself in this?" he asked tersely.

"Why shouldn't I? She's my friend."

"And she's my girlfriend. More than that. I'm her knight. So let me take care of her, and worry about your own problems."

Something flashed in her eyes, and he knew he'd been too harsh, but he didn't feel like backing down.

"Do you have something else to say?" he pressed.

"No, Commander." She saluted him and left the room, her brisk footsteps echoing across the laminated floor.

Squall slumped back in his chair, feeling like a sulky cadet. Why was Quistis the only one to have this effect on him? He seethed at her, and at himself, knowing that Quistis had not really done anything wrong. Still, he was incensed at her. For cutting off his moment with the other Rinoa, robbing him of the addictive chill of her lips and her skin. For playing cheerleader for his warm, flesh-and-blood Rinoa to walk out on him again.

If he was honest, his biggest grievance against Quistis was that she had almost caught him doing something he shouldn't. No matter what both Rinoas had said on the question of cheating, Squall knew somewhere deep down that he was crossing a moral line. Was that what made him so angry? Guilt?

Maybe. But even so, he wanted her. The other Rinoa. He wanted to touch her, kiss her, comfort her. Make her believe they could change fate.

"Are you still there? Rin?" he said softly.

A mocking silence laughed back at him from the empty room, and he felt like an idiot.

Squall let out a sigh, and began to leaf through the stack of cadet profiles that Quistis had brought.

* * *

A/N: (Mini FFVIII rant follows) The part where future-Rinoa says that things are nice and quiet in Squall's head refers to a line that was changed in the English translation of the game, which has bugged me for a while. You know when Squall is in Laguna's head for the first time, he says "This guy talks to himself too much"? In Japanese he says, "It's noisy inside this guy's head." Maybe I'm overthinking it, but I feel like that's quite a significant change to how Ellone's powers are presented... the English version seems to suggest that the 'sent' person is only able to hear what the host vocalizes, in contrast to actually having access to the host's thoughts in the original.

Still, the most egregious mistranslation in the game has to be Rinoa's answer to Selphie's question about whether she still likes Seifer. She was supposed to say, "if I did (still have feelings for him), I wouldn't be able to talk about him like this." That error (probably by a rushed translator on a tight deadline, hey, I ain't judging) led to a whole generation of English-speaking players thinking Rinoa is still in love with Seifer for most of disk 1. Nope nope nope! She was totally over him by the start of the game. /end rant


	10. Chapter 10

Disclaimer: I make no claim whatsoever to the characters or world of Final Fantasy VIII, which is the property of Squaresoft/Square Enix.

* * *

**Chapter X**

Angelo lay sprawled across Squall's knees while he toweled the remaining dampness out of her fur.

"Stop squirming," he told her firmly. "I know how you feel about baths, but it's your own fault. There's only so much mud a man can tolerate on his kitchen floor. I have my limits." He balled up the now soggy towel and dropped it in the plastic bowl at his feet.

Rinoa called out to him from the kitchenette. "Squall, stop going on at her. She's sorry."

"She is absolutely not sorry," he said, mostly to Angelo, who twisted her head so he could scratch her ear, and Squall found himself obliging.

Rinoa's voice came again. "Quistis asked me something strange the other day."

"Hm?"

"She wanted to know if I'd called you in your office that morning. Apparently I was on speakerphone."

Squall swore under his breath. So Quistis had known he was lying. He disliked it when she claimed to be able to read him like a book. Even more so when she was actually right.

"What did you tell her?"

"I said it was me."

"Well, it was."

She poked her head through the archway, a muddied cleaning cloth in hand, and scrutinized his face. "It was the other one, though, right?"

Squall nodded, wondering how much trouble he was about to walk into.

"Did she have anything new to tell you?"

"Not really."

Rinoa cocked her head to one side. "Why are you blushing, Squall?"

"I'm not."

"Were you and her doing something I might get mad about?"

"Potentially."

He conceded that he probably was blushing now. His cheeks were uncomfortably warm. He snuck a look up at Rinoa, who was frowning intensely.

"I'm trying to be cool about this, you know. I'm _trying _to take it as a complement."

"It is. Since you're the same person."

"It's hard to see it that way, from my perspective."

She was fiddling with the cloth in her hands, radiating such anxiety that Angelo sprung off Squall's knees and trotted to her mistress' side.

Rinoa swallowed, and her nervousness only heightened Squall's own. "Okay, I have to ask. Did you sleep with her?"

The way she looked at him, as if bracing herself for a punch to the chest, made his heart skip a beat.

"No."

"But you wanted to."

_Hell yes, _he thought, remembering the hunger in the other Rinoa's eyes.

"That's not fair. And it's irrelevant, anyway. It's not going to happen. Elle would never let it go that far."

She looked confused. "What do you mean?"

"Well, she's kind of an... accidental observer. To the proceedings."

Rinoa screwed her face up in disgust. "Ugh, Squall. That's creepy as hell. You've been making your sister watch us being intimate together!?"

"It won't happen anymore. I know it's not fair on any of us."

"Except you. _You've_ been having a pretty good time."

"I'm the one who's going to die soon, so it seems like an acceptable trade-off."

"That's not funny."

"Rin." He rose from the sofa, standing to face her across the room. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry."

"Hmm. You can make it up to me later." She looked as if she was about to throw the muddy cloth at him, but turned and aimed it at the sink, where it landed with a wet splat.

"Anyway, I don't feel good about lying to Quistis. You know, if Quistis or Xu or somebody catches sight of the other me... well... I think you should just explain. Why don't you tell them what's been going on?"

He stiffened at the idea, somehow repulsed. "It's between you and me. No-one else's business."

"But Squall, look at it this way. You've received fairly convincing intelligence that someone's going to assassinate you. Don't you think SeeD ought to know about it?"

"SeeD doesn't own me." He said it with such force that she walked over to him and searched his face with curious eyes.

"No. Of course they don't. They never have." She reached out to stroke his arm. "Are you okay?"

He kissed her on the forehead, grateful for how short-lived her temper always was. "Yeah. I am."

* * *

Zell and Irvine had only been in Esthar for a matter of days, yet their absence loomed large over Squall. It had not really occurred to him when stamping the order that he was sending away his only close male friends. The realization hit hard once they were gone, however. When Zell's first video call came from his new post, Squall felt an unexpected rush of joy that he quickly stifled in order to put on his Commander's face.

"Leonhart here. Zell, your initial report isn't due until the end of the week. Everything all right?"

"Yeah, fine, but..." Zell scratched his ear. "We've got an unexpected visitor here at the Esthar North office today. Take a look."

He patched Squall into the security feed of the reception room of the three-story office building that Laguna's government had granted to SeeD for a nominal rent. A petite, silver-haired woman sat hunched in a thick Trabian overcoat, arms wrapped defensively around her ribs. Squall blinked and zoomed in on her face. Her tattered eyepatch had evidently been restitched by hand.

"Fujin? What does she want?"

The display switched back to Zell's face, carved into a deep frown. "As far as I can tell, Seifer sent her to sound out what'll happen if he tries to turn himself in. To Garden, I mean. Firing squad as soon as he sets foot on the grounds, or handcuffs and a spell in the basement, or somewhere in between."

Seifer. The other Rinoa had said Garden knew where he was. Was this how it started?

"What did you tell her?"

"The truth. That I have no idea. I just said no-one here has access to that level of decision-making."

Squall considered his options for a moment. "Bring her up to the comms room and let me talk to her directly."

"Sure thing, Commander."

Zell left his seat, and it was filled a minute later by a wary, thin-looking Fujin, her hair lank, its once-metallic sheen dulled.

"SQUALL." Her functioning eye betrayed no emotion, as ever.

"Fujin. Zell says you came to ask something. Ask me. I'm still the Garden Commander, if you've been out of the loop."

"SEIFER. PUNISHMENT?"

"I can't tell you what it would be. He would have to go through the Garden disciplinary process. It wouldn't be down to me alone. A jury of twelve faculty members-"

"NATIONAL GOVERNMENTS. PUNISH?" There was a hint of urgency in her flat tone, he thought.

"If we hold an official Garden court-martial for him and make the proceedings public, Galbadia and Esthar won't be able to claim him to face their own justice. But I can't stop them if he crosses into their territory. President Loire might declare that Seifer is prohibited from ever entering Esthar, for example. They're still dealing with the fallout from the Lunar Cry."

Fujin gave a short, sharp nod. "SEIFER, ACCEPT."

"You think he'll accept Garden justice? Even if it means detention for years? And it could be at least five, Fujin. Maybe more."

"SEIFER, ACCEPT DECISION," she reaffirmed.

"Why?"

Fujin held his gaze for a few moments, then offered as explanation, "EXHAUSTED. REGRET."

Squall leaned his elbows on his desk, his head down. He wasn't about to start feeling pity for Seifer. He couldn't summon the will to feel angry, either. All he could find was an odd blankness, an indifference.

"SQUALL. ANGRY?"

He shook his head. "Tired. Just tired." He looked up at her. Fujin was watching his face carefully.

"You can go back and tell him that the war exhausted me, too. I don't have the mental energy for... vengeance. I don't care anymore. If he comes back, I'll make sure that he has a fair trial. But I won't be his friend. Not that he'd ever want that, anyway."

"FRIENDS, NO. BUT SEIFER, REGRET."

"What, exactly? What does he regret?"

"YOU. TORTURE. REGRET RINOA, ADEL. SEIFER... TIRED. GUILT, EXHAUSTING. FEAR, EXHAUSTING."

"I... Yeah. Well. Tell him... He has to face what he did, and those he hurt. If he's ready to do that, and serve his punishment, then he can stop running. And you two. You and Raijin. You don't have to face Garden's justice. You shouldn't spend your lives as fugitives for someone else's sake."

"POSSE." She stared hard at him, as if challenging him to mock her.

There it was, as always. Fujin and Raijin's unwavering devotion to Seifer, even after everything, even at the cost of their own freedom. Squall had often wondered whether it meant that Seifer had unseen redeeming qualities, or simply that the other members of the 'posse' were impressionable idiots. He could never quite discount the latter possibility in Raijin's case, but Fujin was a puzzle. She was clearly intelligent, and refused to tolerate poor behavior from anyone other than Seifer. For whatever reason, she thought he was worth it.

"I hope Seifer realizes how lucky he is," he told her, and meant it.

"SEIFER... OURS. ALWAYS. SEIFER'S TROUBLE, OUR TROUBLE."

Squall tilted his chair away from the screen and let his gaze wander out the window. Seifer, back at Garden. His mind turned over the idea. Squall would have to recuse himself from participating in any trial. It was too personal. He ran a finger along his scar, remembering the searing pain left by Seifer's blade Hyperion when it had sliced through his skin a year and a half before. Hearing Fujin say that Seifer regretted the brutal torture he'd inflicted on Squall in D-District prison was meaningless. It had happened, and there was no undoing it. They would both have to live with the damage.

"Where is he now? Still in Trabia?"

"AFFIRMATIVE."

"He'd have to be accompanied by Garden personnel on the journey to Balamb. He needs to arrive here under our custody, not turn up when he feels like it."

"ACCEPT. ENTER CUSTODY AT T-GARDEN?"

"Yes. Take him to Trabia Garden as soon as you return, and I'll arrange for him to be transported here. You and Raijin can choose whether to join him or not. You'll be free to go, if you want."

Fujin shook her head. "TOGETHER."

* * *

He left his office early again that evening, his head too full of the changing situation to make sense of anything other than returning to his bed and Rinoa's arms. Squall almost walked into Quistis as he turned into the corridor, and tried to keep the ire out of his expression when he nodded at her. After the awkward end to their last interaction, he really wasn't in the mood for more.

"I'm done for today. Do you need something?"

Quistis raised her eyebrows. "The email you copied me into this afternoon. Instructing T-Garden to prepare for the arrival of a fugitive to be brought here. What on earth was that about?"

Squall quickly checked the empty corridor, and told her in a quiet voice, "Seifer."

"_Seifer_?"

He was unprepared for ferocity of her tone, or the anger and contempt in her eyes. Quistis blinked, and it seemed as if she, too, had not expected her reaction.

The flare of anger faded, and her face was conflicted. She tensed her grip on the files she was holding, and said in a tight voice, "I don't want to see him back here. He doesn't deserve it."

Part of Squall agreed, but his old defensiveness rose, the way it always did when he felt as if Quistis was criticizing his judgement, and the urge to argue with her won out. "It was his home, once. Garden shouldn't turn its back on the kids it raised, even when they've screwed up as badly as he did. Would you have decided differently?"

"It's not my decision." Her gaze was directed away from him, but the color in her cheeks told him of her resentment, and it only amplified his own. _I never asked for this, _he retorted silently. _I never even wanted command of SeeD._

"You're right. It's mine. And I've made it. So let me deal with the consequences." He brushed past her, and made his way to Rinoa, and solace from responsibilities he did not want.

* * *

That night, the frozen wastes of Trabia came to his dreams. He was standing by a lake, half frozen at the edges, the cold filling his lungs and seeping into his blood. Squall pulled off his shirt and felt the soft flakes of snow land and melt on his bare skin.

It felt like her fingertips.

He removed the rest of his clothes and plunged into the lake. In reality, it would have been cold enough to kill a man on impact, but the dream-Squall relished it. The cold permeated through him and welcomed him with love. He felt it smile and caress his face, and he knew it was her.

Squall opened his eyes to see the back of Rinoa's head. She was fast asleep, facing away from him. A whispered voice caught at the edges of his hearing, along with Angelo's rapid breathing, and he carefully left the bed and crept into the living room.

The other Rinoa's arms were around Angelo's neck, her face buried in the dog's fur. Angelo twitched her ears at Squall's presence, and wriggled round to look at him, an unusual calmness in her eyes. _She knows, _he thought. Angelo knew that the woman with her was her mistress, and yet not the same as the one sleeping in the bedroom. She understood that something was strange, and wrong; but she accepted the other Rinoa without question, and loved her, as she always would.

"Shh, baby girl. It's okay," Rinoa whispered to her, then tilted her head and registered Squall's presence. Her eyes were gleaming with unshed tears.

He crossed the floor and joined her on the sofa. Angelo stretched across the other Rinoa's lap, and laid her head on Squall's knee.

"You okay?"

Rinoa rubbed at her eyes with one hand. "Yeah. I just... I miss her."

Squall ruffled the fur on the back of Angelo's neck. "What happened to her?"

She looked as if she was about to cry, and he wished he hadn't asked.

"Did she-"

"No. No, she's still alive. Elle told me that Selphie and Irvine adopted her after... you know. Everything. I guess she's almost an old lady now. I wonder what she looks like. If she remembers me."

"She'd never forget you, Rin."

He started to stroke her arm, felt the cold tingle invitingly and withdrew his hand. This was the road to danger, he knew. And with his own Rinoa in the other room, too. Willpower had to take charge over instincts this time.

"I, uh, I promised my Rinoa... No more crossing the line."

She gave a pained smile. "I promised Elle, too. Repeatedly. She wasn't happy at _all_ about last time. I got an earful as soon as we were back at the Memorial."

"Sorry."

"Well, at least Laguna was amused. Once he worked out what Elle was shouting about, we couldn't get him to stop laughing."

Squall looked at her quizzically.

"I believe his exact words were 'Attaboy, son!'"

"That... makes me uncomfortable."

"I thought it would." A shadow of the old mischievous Rinoa crossed her face, and it made him smile.

"Where have you been tonight?" he asked.

"The Training Center, your office, the Faculty office."

"Anything?"

"No." Her voice was defeated, exhausted. She leaned her forehead down into Angelo's fur.

"Seifer's coming back," Squall said, and she turned her face to look at his expression.

"Ah. I thought that would happen sometime soon. You were kind of... resigned about it, as I recall."

"I don't really know how I'm supposed to feel."

"Whatever you feel is yours. Don't let anyone tell you how to react."

"Quistis doesn't want him to come back."

"Hmm. Is that so? Funny, because they got on pretty well afterwards. Apparently."

"Quistis and Seifer?"

"According to Elle, yes."

Quistis' angry eyes flashed into Squall's mind, and he remembered the viciousness of her tone when she'd spat out Seifer's name. It didn't make sense. Something nagged at him, something that was out of place, but he wasn't sure what it was.

Rinoa patted Angelo's belly, and the dog squirmed sleepily. "Elle says the connection's about to drop out. It's getting harder for her to send me for more than about an hour these days. I'd better get back, so..."

"I understand." He stroked the crown of her hair, as gently as he could manage without feeling the enticing chill of her skin. "I love you, Rin. Take that back with you."

"I will. Thank you. It means so much, to see you like this."

He thought of the Memorial, where she would soon wake up, with his sister and father looking anxiously on. "Tell Elle I love her, too. And Laguna, well... Tell him thanks. For what he's doing for us, both of us. The chance he's giving us."

"I will." She smiled at him, the first real, uninhibited smile he'd seen on her gaunt face. It was her smile that seemed to linger longest as she flickered around the edges then disappeared, letting Angelo's lower half slump down onto the sofa cushions.

Angelo raised her head, ears cocked, and stared at Squall.

"Yeah, I know. Confusing, isn't it?" he said, patting her head absently.

Angelo slipped off the sofa and padded over to the bedroom, her tail disappearing into the dark. Squall knew she would be settling herself around the present-day Rinoa's feet by now. He stood, shook the daze out of his eyes, and went to join them in their slumber.


	11. Chapter 11

Disclaimer: I make no claim whatsoever to the characters or world of Final Fantasy VIII, which is the property of Squaresoft/Square Enix.

* * *

**Chapter XI**

Consciousness trickled back into her body, and she was nudged fully awake by the clammy fingers that worked quickly to secure two heavy Odine bangles around both of her wrists. The magic pulsing through her body slowed to a crawl, sluggish and dulled. Even so, she knew she could still rouse enough power to shatter the bangles and blast through the windows of the room in an instant. She had never told them that. A sorceress had to keep one last card held close to her chest, after all.

One day, she might need it.

Rinoa drew in a slow breath, and opened her eyes to the clinical surroundings of the Sorceress Memorial's prep room, all gunmetal gray walls and stacked medical equipment.

She shifted on the thin, uncomfortable bed. Her thighs were still warm from the weight of Angelo lying on her lap eight years in the past, barely a few moments ago.

Doctor Odine peered down at her, and bent his head to hers to remove the electrode pads from her temples. She tried not to flinch at the feel of his fingertips, the closeness of his hot breath. The man set her teeth on edge, every time.

He stood back and gazed at her impassively, the eyes of a scientist assessing his specimen. Laguna appeared at his side, his weathered, open face greeting her with a smile.

"Welcome back, kiddo. Anything to report?"

Rinoa sat up slowly, the bangles clanking against each other as she folded her arms around her knees. "No. Sorry. I couldn't find anything."

She turned her head away from Laguna's disappointed eyes to look at the other bed in the room, and its occupant. Ellone lay on her side, still unconscious, wearing the same O-Lab branded white scrubs worn by all Odine's experiment subjects.

Ellone's sleeping face was turned towards her, her skin pale and wan. Rinoa noticed, for the first time, a couple of sparkling strands of silver threading through Ellone's dark, chin length hair. She was in her early thirties, now. While Laguna's gray streaks had increased to cover almost half of his head, and Rinoa had thought little of it, evidence of Ellone aging was somehow far more unsettling.

Laguna followed her gaze. "So. Is she gonna wake up mad as hell, yelling about 'hormone-crazed teenage idiots' again?"

"Squall and I managed to behave ourselves this time." Her words came out small and stilted, as they always did after waking in the present.

He chuckled. "Ah, that's a shame. I was looking forward to hearing about-"

Odine, who was fiddling with the monitor at the side of Ellone's bed, looked up at Laguna. "Miz Ellone's heart rate is unusual. It may be best not to avaken her."

Rinoa remembered how Ellone's voice had weakened in her mind, sounding further and further away. "She... she was struggling towards the end."

"Her temporal ether-energy reading has fallen to zero zis time. It vill be several months before her power begins to return. A year, maybe, before she can send Miz Rinoa again."

Laguna joined him at the monitor, and frowned down at it. "A year, huh."

Odine's piercing black eyes flashed back to Rinoa, and she turned her face away. He hobbled over to the door and gave his ridiculous, exaggerated little bow to Laguna, who nodded distractedly as the doctor left the room.

Rinoa twisted one of the bangles round her wrist, feeling the metal pinch and drag at her skin. "I don't know if we should be doing this anymore. At Elle's expense. It's... too selfish."

Laguna met her eyes with a solemn expression but said nothing. They sat in silence for a long moment, which was broken by Ellone suddenly sitting upright in her bed. She ripped her electrodes off, a scowl on her face.

"I heard that. Shut up."

"But you-"

"We're so close, Rin. We need to give it one last shot."

Rinoa felt her shoulders sag as the weight of Ellone's words hit her. "You mean, go to the day it happens."

"Yes, I do. I think I can send you one more time. But not more than that. I can't seem to sustain the connection long enough anymore." Ellone frowned, massaging her temples where the electrodes had left an angry red mark. "Damn. It got rough there, right at the end."

"Does it hurt you?" Rinoa asked, and she saw unease flicker in Laguna's eyes.

Ellone shrugged and bundled up the electrode cables, shoving them to the side of the bed. "Doesn't matter."

"Of course it matters. I think it's time to stop. You have your own life to get on with. Me and Squall... our story is done. Maybe it's time to leave it in the past."

Ellone's head shot up, her expression fierce. "Nope. You don't get to say that now, Rin. We've been doing this for two years. It's only been a few days for you, so you don't know what it's been like for us. How much of our lives we've put into it."

"Elle." Laguna laid a hand on her shoulder. "Ease up."

Ellone shrugged his hand off and glared up at him. "We've come too far to give up at the last hurdle, Laguna."

"I agree. But Rinoa's the one who's going back there. It's important that we're all on the same page."

They both looked at Rinoa, and she felt herself shrinking under their eyes. She pulled her knees up to her chest, resting her chin in the gap between them.

Laguna took a seat next to her on the bed, and smiled at her gently. She'd seen the exact same smile a few minutes before, on Squall, and it pierced her to look at it again.

"You want to save him, don't you?" Laguna asked, his voice soft and encouraging.

"Of course. I..."

"You're afraid. What if you can't? What then? Is that what you're thinking?"

She nodded, and sunk her head into her knees, burying her face in the thin fabric of the scrubs.

It was too much. Everything was too much. If she could make herself small enough, if she could somehow not be here anymore, not be anywhere...

She felt Laguna's warm fingers patting her head, in the avuncular way she had often seen him do to Ellone. "Elle forgets sometimes that you're still barely more than a kid. Don't hold it against her. Time stasis gets confusing for the rest of us. We keep getting older, see."

"I'm not... I'm not a child."

"No, p'raps that wasn't fair. You're young, though. This was always way too much for you and Squall to bear. Sorcery, SeeD, all of it." His hand moved down to her shoulders, and he squeezed them in a tentative half-hug. "Rinoa. If you try, and nothing changes, you get to know that you tried. And I'll know that we did what we could do save my son, and Elle will know that she gave it her all for her brother. Won't that be worth it?"

Ellone crouched at the side of the bed, her brows drawn together in determination. "One more time, Rin. That's all. I'll get my powers back, and we'll be ready to go."

She wanted to scream at them, tell them how much it all hurt. The yearning. The physical pain she felt on seeing him, talking to him, existing inside his mind and feeling his innate Squall-ness running through every frozen vein in her body, all the while knowing he was only a shadow in the past. The bitter blow of reawakening each time in a present where he was long dead, his body decomposing under the soil in Winhill Cemetery next to Raine's. The fragile growth of hope that there might be some way to change it all, and the crushing dread of having that hope wrenched away. How could Ellone and Laguna understand how it felt to have all that weight upon her? How could she even begin to explain it?

She looked back at them, at Ellone's impassioned gaze and Laguna's hopeful smile, and she knew there was no choice; there had never been any meaningful choice.

"All right. One more time."

* * *

Rinoa stood by the small, square window, the bars across it half-obscuring the dead night of the Great Plains of Esthar outside. The dark sky was tinged with the luminous glow of pre-dawn. She had begun to hate it, the way it taunted her with the prospect of yet another sunrise she would never see.

She craved it all, even more than she craved a world where Squall was alive. There was a world out there where people existed in the warmth of sunlight, not confined to darkness and fluorescent strip lighting. People whose lives were tempered by green grass, hot summers, the sting and caress of the winter winds. Raindrops on bare skin. Blue skies.

Perhaps the worst thing was the knowledge that it _could _all be hers again, if she seized it. If she tore through the bonds that held her, if she fought, maimed and killed for her freedom. A price Rinoa told herself she could never pay. Still, the kernel of temptation was always there, and there were times when it burned a hole in her mind.

Death would have been immeasurably kinder than this. Not for the first time, she envied Squall.

She pressed a finger lightly against the glass, and watched as tiny frost crystals gathered and spread across the window pane.

Rinoa turned at the sound of the door handle. Ellone emerged from the bathroom cubicle, dressed in her regular clothes. She placed her neatly-folded scrubs on the bed and smoothed out her skirt, glancing up at the gleaming chrome clock on the wall.

"It's gone five a.m., Laguna. The daytime staff will be back on duty soon."

"Yeah." Laguna loped across the room and clapped Rinoa affectionately on the back. "C'mon, kiddo. Time for you to be a popsicle again."

Ellone flashed him a sharp look. "Not appropriate." She stepped towards Rinoa and offered her hand awkwardly. "See you in a year or so, I guess."

It was obvious that Ellone found it difficult to navigate her physical interactions with Rinoa. Rinoa felt the same. They were two women who could hear each other's thoughts when connected, a unique level of intimacy that inevitably fell flat on their return to waking life.

Rinoa reached out to take Ellone's hand, and stifled an uncharitable twinge of satisfaction at the way Ellone flinched at the coldness of her touch.

"Yeah. See you."

Rinoa let Laguna steer her by the arm out of the prep room, and numbly ascended the metal steps to the Memorial's sealing chamber. Laguna crossed over to the control panel, his hands moving quickly across the face of the console.

She stood on the steps, facing the empty chamber, and another year of frozen stasis. She touched her hand to her forehead, instinctively, and felt the thin line of her stigmata, the only remaining fragment of Squall Leonhart's existence.

"Laguna, he- He said thanks."

"Hm?" He looked up from the control panel. "I should damn well hope so. The kid's lucky to have two of you looking out for him." He grinned, his easy, cheerful grin, and she wondered for the hundredth time how Squall might have looked at his age, if his eyes might have creased up in the same way when he smiled.

"No, I mean, to you. He told me to thank you. For everything."

Laguna paused over the console, his head facing downwards, and the way he blinked made her suspect that tears were pricking at his eyes.

"I'm glad you told me that," he said in a muted voice.

He did not look up, and she watched as he pressed a few more buttons. A painful blast of bitter cold hit her as the six-inch thick wall of glass covering the chamber slid open. Laguna gestured for her to step in, and she did.

"You'll see us again real soon, Rinoa. Sleep well."

The glass wall sealed, and Rinoa waited. It would come soon, the now-familiar rising panic as her body and brain shrieked to her that she was about to die. _Don't fight it,_ she reminded herself. She let her mind succumb to the overwhelming sleepiness as her skin started to freeze solid.

The intense cold seared each nerve ending, her heart stopped beating, and time came to a standstill for the last living sorceress.


	12. Chapter 12

Disclaimer: I make no claim whatsoever to the characters or world of Final Fantasy VIII, which is the property of Squaresoft/Square Enix.

* * *

**Chapter XII**

In the mid-afternoon, Squall rose to his feet at the sound of a hesitant knock on the door of his office that was neither Quistis' brisk rap-rap-rap or Xu's aggressive hammering. There was only one person in Garden who knocked like that, and he opened the door and pulled her into a hug before she could say anything. When he broke away and looked down at her, her eyes were red-rimmed.

"Rin, what happened?"

"I... I think I might need to leave for Deling."

"Deling?" He frowned. She hated the place.

"It's Caraway. Quistis told me... there's a SeeD source in the G-Army who's been saying Caraway's been sick for months. And that Galbadia's been hushing it up, because of the leadership vacuum... people will start panicking if they know Caraway's going to... going to..." She swallowed.

"How sick?" Squall had not known about any of this, but liaising with SeeD's worldwide network of undercover sources was part of Xu's job, not his.

"The source thinks it's lung cancer. Advanced, probably terminal." Rinoa raked her hand through her hair several times. "Those stupid cigars. I always used to tell him how much they made him stink. Even my mom hated them."

"Why wasn't I informed?" he blurted out, still in Commander mode, then regretted it when Rinoa looked wounded.

"I think Quistis considered it a personal matter, not a SeeD one. So she came straight to me. I got the feeling she's a little wary of talking to you about me, recently."

Squall remembered how he'd snapped at Quistis the last time she had brought up the topic of Rinoa, and said nothing.

Rinoa clutched at the two rings on the chain around her neck, rubbing them against each other. "I - The only thing I can think of is to find out what's happening for myself. I can't even remember what the last thing I said to him was. Probably 'leave me alone'. I don't want that to be- to be the thing he remembers, when he-"

Squall tightened his grip on her shoulders. "It's okay. Go. Do what you need to do."

She looked out of the window distractedly, her eyes on the pale, vast moon that had appeared in the autumnal sky, a ghostlike imprint on the rich blue. "Is it the supermoon already?"

"It's tomorrow, Rin."

Her eyes, wide with worry, met his. "What if something happens while I'm gone?"

"It's only a couple of days, right? I'll be fine."

"But..."

"Don't worry. If someone does try to kill me, I'm pretty sure the other you will show up and take care of things."

"Ohh." She wriggled out of his grasp. "You just want me out of the way so you can make out with the hotter, scarface version."

"Rin, that's-"

"You want to see her though, don't you?"

"Yeah. I care about her. Because she's you."

She gave him a long, searching look, and said acidly, "It must be nice, having a version of me who's always pleased to see you. Being dead must make you pretty much perfect in her eyes."

"Rin, stop. She's _you. _I love _you._"

He caught hold of her waist again, and she relented, and let him draw her back in.

"Take care of yourself in Deling. Good luck." He cradled her face before kissing her and wondered, for the briefest moment, if it might be the last time, then pushed that unwelcome thought far away.

* * *

The night, and the greater part of the following day, passed without a trace of either version of Rinoa, and Squall was so consumed with his Commander's duties that he barely had time to miss her. He dispatched a squad of ten SeeDs on gunboats across the sea to Dollet, after the Dukedom requested help with quelling a throng of rampaging Behemoths in the outskirts of the city. Reports of frenzied monster attacks came in from Balamb later in the afternoon as the supermoon began to rise, and he sent out two more squads. By the time all the supermoon measures were set in place, there was barely a skeleton crew of SeeDs remaining at Garden, leaving the upper floors eerily quiet.

The dark had set in when his comms unit buzzed with an intra-Garden message, and he scowled down at it, wondering if a beast attack had reached the grounds. It would not be the first time. The last supermoon had seen a confused, angry Buel crash through the windows of one of the junior classrooms, shattering the glass screens of several computer terminals before it was taken out by a furious Xu.

_Your presence is required in the Ballroom, Commander. QT _

Quistis had attached the message tags for both 'Urgent' and 'Confidential', without actually telling him what she wanted, which was the sort of communication Squall hated with a passion. He heaved out of his chair with a sigh and left the office.

* * *

His steps resounded across the floor of the darkened ballroom as he tried to make out Quistis' silhouette in the gloom. Her voice came, cutting softly through the silence, before he found her.

"Commander, look."

Quistis had her back to him, and was staring up at the huge supermoon that hung in the sky above the atrium. He felt a rising irritation. _She called me out here to look at the damn moon? I haven't got time for this._

"What? It's just a normal supermoon, isn't it? We've taken precautions, loaded the active SeeDs up with extra defense spells. I've spend all day sending out squads. If this is all-"

She turned round, smiling, and pointed up with one finger, in perfect mimicry of the gesture Rinoa had once made.

Squall felt his hackles rise. Was she mocking him, and Rinoa? Would Quistis even know about that moment? True, she'd been at the ball that night, but... Had she been watching? He felt an acute discomfort, almost a sense of violation. The instant when he had first seen Rinoa was a special memory locked inside the core of his essence, what made him _him. _The thought that someone else was trying to claim it in some way was-

Then he noticed her eyes, and the gears of his thoughts ground to a halt.

"Quistis?" He took a small step back.

"_Quistis?_" she repeated tauntingly, as she advanced towards him. "You're even slower than you look, little SeeD. How can you bear to exist within the confines of such a pathetic mind?"

"Not you. It can't be you." She was upon him now, and his hand reached for his gunblade, even as he knew it was not there.

"You know my name. Say it." One of Quistis' long, elegant fingers carved out a chilling trail along his jaw, and he found himself battling a sudden nausea. A cloud of purple magic massed around her fingertips, and those glowing amber eyes narrowed. "Say it, boy."

"Ultimecia," he hissed.

"Very good."

He tried to move, and she flexed her fingers. Shards of ice fastened themselves to his arms and legs, and he was immobile.

"We killed you. I struck the final blow. You can't be here."

"You may have defeated my body, but there is nothing you can do to harm my consciousness." Her eyes glittered with contempt. "It is impossible for me to die until my powers have been inherited. My consciousness can still travel in time, foolish SeeD. Did that not occur to you, as you were striking my body down?"

Squall's mind raced. He had already seen her pass on her powers, to Edea in the orphanage, years in the past. Was Ultimecia unaware of that? Had it simply not happened to her yet? _Keep her talking, _he told himself.

"Why her? Why Quistis?"

She smiled, an expression completely devoid of warmth. "I am correcting my mistake. When you fought me before, when I took the form of Edea, you brought three girls to me. Two skilled SeeDs, and one spoilt princess." She smirked in derision, and Squall thought he had never seen such an ugly expression on Quistis' face.

"Do you know why I chose the little dark-haired girl, the one you took for a lover? Because she was the weakest. I knew the SeeDs would put up a much stronger fight against possession. But I should have looked at them more closely. I turned my back on two formidable magic users to use your little twit instead. I chose poorly. I am rectifying that decision now."

Squall felt the ice spread and curl tightly around his wrists, the frozen pressure making him feel light-headed. "But Quistis isn't a sorceress, how can you be possessing-"

"Fool! Are you so blind that you never noticed that the most powerful Blue Mage in the world was right under your nose? Do you really think there is only one kind of sorcery? Trepe's command of Blue Magic is unsurpassed, even in my time. When you faced me again, when you brought her to my castle, I realized the depth of my mistake."

"And then, there was the matter of _you_," she spat. "Had I known you were pining after the little weakling, I could have foreseen that you would try to make yourself her Knight. But this one… there was no-one who loved her enough to do that. Neither then, nor now. She will belong only to me."

Squall tried to keep his focus on one thought: _She's already dying. I know that she is. I just have to wait._ "Quistis has her own_ fan club,_" he argued._ "_This Garden is full of young men who would do anything for her."

"Surely you are not so stupid that you do not know the difference between infatuation and devotion? Are you comparing such... such infantile objectification to _love_? You, who claims to love your own Sorceress?"

"What would you know about love?" he snarled.

"I know that there is not a single soul in all of space and time who has felt it for me. I, who was despised and feared for generations before I was even born."

She turned her empty eyes on him and in that moment, Squall keenly felt the stark truth in her reply. He almost regretted the cruelty of his question.

"And Trepe, in her loneliest moments, feels the same. She has fought admirably to keep me at bay, all these months since I followed her out of Time Compression. Harder than Edea ever did. But she is mine now. She and I, together, will change the course of history."

Squall reached out in his mind, desperate to feel Rinoa's presence. Silence leered back at him, and he screamed into it. _Rin, Elle! If you're going to make an appearance, now would be a really good fucking time. _

"What about your Knight?" he asked, trying to keep his voice steady. "You must know that Seifer's coming back."

Her eyes flashed with fury. "Do not mention that failure's name in my presence. When he arrives here, he will receive his punishment. I will snuff his worthless life out, as I should have done before. Trepe and I have no need for him."

Ultimecia wound one of Quistis's honey-blond locks around her finger, and smiled with satisfaction when it bounced back into a long, impeccably glossy wave. "You have always overlooked this one. It pained her so. I will be the one to give her everything she deserves." She stretched out her hand again, and the magic started to gather, deep violet sparks leaping out into the air.

"But first, the obstacle to her reign must be removed. SeeD will no longer oppose me, boy, and neither will you."

The shards of ice crept up around Squall's neck, squeezing the life from his throat. Ice. His subconscious had come to associate the feeling of cold with pleasure, with the sensuous chill of the other Rinoa's skin. Now it meant only pain, and the closeness of his own death, and he felt ashamed, exposed.

Exposed, weak, with no weapon, and no junctions. Without his gunblade, para-magic, or Guardian Forces, he was a nineteen-year-old boy standing in front of Ultimecia, all of her power, all of her anger, and he was nothing. And he would die.

He felt a scream inside of him, as something buried within fought like a wildcat to break free. He thought it was himself, then he started to feel the otherness of her; an other whose presence was almost as familiar as the weight of his own mind. Rinoa struggled, pushed and finally stepped through him, as if he was a pool of water, and she was a drowning woman swimming to the surface.

The ice around his body shattered into tiny fragments on the floor, a dusting of glassy frost, and future-Rinoa stood in front of him, breathless, glowing with pale-blue sorcery that rippled and shimmered across her skin. Squall felt impermeable, invisible walls close around him in a perfect sphere, and he knew she had encased him in a Super-Shell.

Rinoa stepped towards Quistis, a white-hot aura of magic crackling around her body.

"I never thought it could have been you."


	13. Chapter 13

Disclaimer: I make no claim whatsoever to the characters or world of Final Fantasy VIII, which is the property of Squaresoft/Square Enix.

* * *

**Chapter XIII**

"Rin, she's not Quistis."

"I know. I heard her. I know who she is." Rinoa stepped towards Ultimecia, who tensed her fingers, releasing a searing blast of Thundaga at Squall. It fizzed and faded as soon as it hit the Super-Shell, and Ultimecia snarled with displeasure, turning her outstretched hand to Rinoa.

"I sent you away, little girl."

"A different me. You're not the only one coming from the future. Don't you realize that?"

Flames rushed towards Rinoa, and Squall felt his heart skip a beat as the Firaga closed in on her. Rinoa calmly waved a hand, and the fire winked out before it even touched her skin. She took another step closer to Ultimecia.

"You chose me because I was the weakest. I'm not weak any more."

Rinoa lifted her hand higher, and then Ultimecia stood motionless, her outrage frozen into Quistis' face by the strength of Rinoa's Stop spell. Rinoa turned to look at Squall. The traces of her cold fury awed him before they slipped away, and she was his girlfriend again, worried and scared.

"Are you hurt?"

"No." Squall reached out towards her, pressing his palms against the wall of the Super-Shell. "I was beginning to think you weren't going to show up."

"I nearly couldn't. It was so much harder to break through this time. Elle's power took more than a year to come back, and it's still not the way it was."

Rinoa looked at Quistis' time-frozen form, then back to him, her eyes helpless. "What do I do? I don't know how to force Ultimecia out without hurting Quistis."

"Rin, I don't think you have to. I'm certain she ends up leaving Quistis' body, whatever happens. I've already seen her die in the past, remember. Tell me, what was Quistis like in your future? After I died?"

"She was _Quistis_. She definitely wasn't... she wasn't Ultimecia. I only saw her a few times before I was sealed, but she was just... Quistis." She paused, blinking. "Elle says she's exactly the same, even now. She's still Headmistress, Squall. She was devastated when we lost you. I can't believe that she has any idea that this happened."

"All right." He nodded, his theory growing more solid, enough to pin his confidence on. "Then Ultimecia must've left Quistis' body unwillingly, when her own body died in Time Compression and took her to Edea. Maybe the energy she used to kill me was enough to finish her off. We just have to wait it out until that happens. And you're here this time, so you can stop her from killing me. We can do this."

She turned back to stare at Ultimecia. "I... I don't know, Squall."

"I saw her die. It's already happened!"

Rinoa whirled around, unrestrained blue sparks leaping from her hands. "Don't say that, as if it can't be changed! _You _already died, too!"

"Only in your time. We're in mine right now. Ultimecia's death is in the past, it's unchangeable. But mine hasn't happened yet. All bets are off, Rin."

She clutched both sides of her head, eyes racing back and forth between Squall and their adversary. "Elle thinks that makes sense, but I..."

"I trust you," he said, and his assurance seemed to reach her. Rinoa's eyes stilled, and the bright haze of her magical aura dimmed in intensity.

"The Stop spell won't hold out much longer. I can feel her pushing against it. She's strong enough to break through. I'll try to keep you in the Super-Shell, but be ready to run."

"Got it."

Rinoa faced Ultimecia again, and Squall felt his adrenaline pulse faster as they waited for her to move. Then it came, and the ugly anger on Quistis' face twisted into a sneer as her eyes took in Rinoa's appearance. She let out a cruel, humorless laugh.

"Your stigmata... It means that I have already succeeded. You cannot save him."

"Time can be changed," Rinoa shot back, but Squall knew the confidence in her voice was forced. "You know that better than anybody."

"But not by you. Look at yourself, carrying another's scar. Clinging to the scrap of a memory. Do you remember the markings on my body? My face? I wore those in mockery of fools like you. I would never bleed for any Knight. Men served me, or died at my hands. There is no other use for them. And believe me, I have no use for yours." She raised both hands towards Squall, yellow-orange magic swirling around her fingers.

The spell that raced towards him was Meltdown. Squall knew it would not inflict major damage, but would tear his defenses down to barely anything. If there was any magic that could destroy Rinoa's Super-Shell, this could be it. He braced himself.

The fireball distorted and unravelled, yellow flames ripping free and scattering across the ballroom. Confused, Squall turned his eyes to Rinoa, and saw the fierce winds that spiraled from her hands and whipped at the fire of the Meltdown, its burning sphere now reduced to a ball barely bigger than Squall's fist. She was using Tornado to shred and disperse the flames into pockets of hot air. The last, tiny spark of the Meltdown lost its fight against the wind, and flew up towards the atrium.

Quistis' mouth set in a cold, angry line. "If you are so keen to throw your life away for his, so be it. I will gladly take your magic as my own."

A pinhead of green-white light expanded from her fingers as she hurled an Ultima spell at Rinoa. Rinoa cast Shell immediately, but Squall watched her body buckle as the remaining force of the spell crashed through the barrier. She straightened, a sheen of healing magic sweeping across her skin, and the two sorceresses began to duel in earnest.

Ultimecia unleashed a volley of spells: Thundaga, Meteor, a Quake that rattled the glass in the atrium so hard Squall thought it would come crashing down. Rinoa deflected and blocked each attack, never striking at Quistis' body directly, which only seemed to enrage Ultimecia further.

"Do not mock me!" she roared, blasting Rinoa with a bolt of Thundaga. Rinoa flickered and vanished, and the lightning hit the floor where she had stood, leaving angry scorch marks on the polished tiles.

"Rin! What -"

She reappeared, barely a moment later, in the same spot. "It's Elle. She can't hold the connection. She-"

Whatever Rinoa was about to say was lost, as she vanished a second time. Squall felt the walls of the Super-Shell fall away, and Ultimecia's expression of surprise quickly transformed to one of triumph. She advanced towards him.

"_Well_. What are you now, without her? Without magic?" She stood in front of Squall, her palms spread wide. "Show me. Strike me."

"No." They both knew he was the weaker one. Any invitation she made had to be a trick.

"Do it." Her hand moved, and was at his throat; she squeezed, and he felt his skin tear against the force of her nails. Squall instinctively drew his fist back, then lowered it. He had fought against Quistis countless times in training over the years, but this was different, and it turned his stomach.

Her amber eyes bore into his, and he wondered if she could read his thoughts. "Trepe is gone, boy. Strike, if you want to fight for your life."

His fist made contact on the side of her face. Her powerful Protect spell dulled the impact of his knuckles immediately. Ultimecia shrieked with laughter, a piercing sound he could never have imagined coming from Quistis' lips.

"As I thought. Without junctions, SeeDs are nothing. Even their Commander can barely touch me." She released his throat, and pushed him to the floor. "You give yourselves artificial strength with para-magic, made with magic stolen from my sisters."

Squall scrambled to his feet. "Stolen? I don't-"

"Lies! Do you think the Odine Experiments were hidden from history? Every child in my time knew his name. SeeD was created to destroy me, using a crude imitation of the true form of magic. You took our Sorcery, warped it for your own use, and swore to hunt the last Sorceress to her death. How can you feel no shame at such rank hypocrisy?"

She slapped him hard across the cheeks, the open-handed smack of a ruler to a slave. "Today, it changes. SeeD will be governed by a Sorceress. Quistis Trepe will bring forth a future where my kind are worshipped, as we were in antiquity. And it will be-"

The air between them rippled, and Rinoa's form was suddenly there; flickering, but there. The Super-Shell shimmered and resealed around Squall while Rinoa spun round to hurl a Petrify spell at Ultimecia, and Quistis' pale skin turned gray as the stone effect crept up her arms and immobilized her face in a moment of pure shock.

Rinoa turned to Squall, and started to speak before her image quivered and cut out. "Odine thinks -"

She was gone, and he dived to catch where she had been, but crashed against invisible barrier of the Super-Shell, somehow still in effect. "Rin? Where are you?"

She appeared again. "- divergent timelines - "

Then she vanished, and there was nothing between himself and the petrified form of Quistis. Before Squall could move, Rinoa came back, talking quickly as she flickered, her image growing more vivid. "Elle's power can't bridge two realities - "

"- why the connection cuts out. Depending on which timeline will end up dominant - "

Flakes of stone dust fell to the floor as Quistis' outstretched fingers began to twitch.

" - we're at a crossroads between two futures."

It was enough for Squall to get the gist of what was happening. "Which means-"

The air crackled loudly, and Rinoa was fully solid this time, her face heated with passion. "Which means it's fifty-fifty right now. I'll take those odds."

She threw her head back, and pure white wings burst forth from her shoulder blades, a handful of loose downy feathers drifting to the floor. The layer of stone crumbled away, and Ultimecia was moving again, furious and glowing with a mass of purple-black magic that rose into the air as she cast Meteor, a hail of rocks that hurtled towards Rinoa.

A Reflect spell flew out of Rinoa's hands, and Squall wondered for a moment if Quistis' body would survive the blast of the rocks, before he realized that Rinoa had taken care to angle the spell upwards. The diverted Meteor crashed into the ballroom's great chandelier, knocking it to the floor, jagged pieces of crystal skidding across the tiles to every corner of the room.

Ultimecia was showing signs of flagging now, her speed dropping, her spells weakening. Rinoa, however, was not. Squall marveled at the calm concentration on her face, how strong she was, how fast her reflexes were. It occurred to him that he had never really watched her fight before. During the war, he had always been too busy fighting himself to look over his shoulder at her and observe what she was doing. She was formidable, far more adept than even the strongest para-magic user among the SeeDs under his command. He watched her evade another Quake with ease, using Float to rise up towards the ballroom's ceiling, the perfect arc of her white wings spread wide. Squall made a mental note that if he survived this, the first thing he would do would be to tell her how beautiful she was.

Ultimecia faltered, almost stumbling, and Rinoa drifted slowly back down.

"I won't- This can't-" Ultimecia gave a tiny gasp, and Quistis's body slumped to the floor.

Rinoa turned to Squall, her wings still unfurled and beating behind her, her eyes wide in shock, and then she was no longer there.

The Super-Shell around Squall was gone in the same instant, and he ran over to where Rinoa had been a split second ago, reaching his hand out in a futile attempt to somehow hold onto her. The way she had disappeared was different to before; all those times when Ellone had cut the connection and Rinoa had vanished cleanly into nothing. This time, her image had dissolved into a sheen of iridescent white light that slowly faded away - he could still see wisps of it - and he knew that she was gone, forever, her timeline averted by his survival.

He stared, unable to move, the heavy silence of the ballroom suffocating him. When Quistis started to stir, he had no idea if it had been mere seconds or whole minutes. Squall walked carefully over to her limp body, finding places for his feet among the sea of broken crystal, and bent down to look at her.

The supermoon, still looming high above the atrium, illuminated her face clearly, and she opened her eyes. Pale blue, serious eyes, without a trace of Ultimecia's otherworldly amber. He let out a quiet breath.

Quistis squinted up at him. "Squall? Where... where are we?"

"The ballroom." He reached out his hand and helped her to her feet.

She swayed unsteadily for a moment, then her eyes widened as she took in the sight of the shattered chandelier, its crystalline fragments strewn across the floor.

"Goodness. What on earth..."

"You don't remember anything?"

Her blank look told him the answer to that, and Squall turned his face away from her, wondering how much she should know, and how much he should keep to himself. Perhaps it would be kinder if he-

Quistis pulled at his shoulder impatiently. "Tell me right now. What happened?"

"You... Ultimecia happened. To you."

"No." She sunk back to the floor, crouching, her hands dropping to her ankles. "No..." Quistis whispered again, her horror evident. "You mean, she was really there? All this time, she wasn't just my imagination, she..." She looked up at him, and he had never seen her so helpless. "And she... took over?"

"It seems so."

"What did I do?" Her eyes travelled to the fresh smears of blood at his throat. "I hurt you."

"Not much."

"I'm sorry, Squall. I couldn't stop her. I've failed you, failed everyone-"

"No. She was right about one thing. It's me that's failed you. I haven't given you the respect you deserve. I'm sorry for that, Quistis."

She stared at him, panic creeping into her expression. "Whatever she said to you, it's not true-"

He shook his head. "She was right."

"I..." Quistis covered her face with her fingers, and Squall paused for a long, uncomfortable moment where he was certain she was fighting against tears. Quistis would never want to cry in front of him. He waited until he was sure she had won her battle before he spoke again.

"How long has she been there?" he asked. "When did this start?"

"She's never taken me over before. I'm sure of that. At least, I thought I was..." She frowned, suddenly unsure of herself, and it made Squall wonder about the pillar in the Training Center. "But I've been... sensing her. For a couple of months, maybe three or four. This growing feeling that she's walking one step behind me, but always gone when I turn around..." Quistis' voice dwindled to a whisper. "And there were days when I started to think... Perhaps she and I aren't so different."

He kicked away a large shard of the chandelier, and sat down next to her. "You should have told someone."

"I _did_, Squall. I talked to Xu about it. A lot. She made me go to Dr. Kadowaki. I've been having counseling sessions." Quistis gave a heavy sigh and brought both hands to her temples, hiding her eyes. "Dr. K, well, she thinks I've been harboring guilt. She said that identifying with someone we killed is a healthy way to process what happened. She encouraged me not to fight those feelings. I... I guess that made it easier for Ultimecia to possess me."

He shrugged. "The supermoon amplifies magic. Maybe that's what gave her the edge tonight."

She didn't seem to hear him. "How could I be so stupid?"

"It's not your fault. I just wish you'd told me."

She met his eyes then, and looked away, ashamed. "I nearly did. I started to. That day I brought you lunch, do you remember? I tried, but... I lost my nerve. I thought you... wouldn't be very receptive to it."

Squall felt his own twinge of shame as he remembered that day, how irritable and dismissive he had been. He'd shut her down as soon as she'd even hinted at the topic of Ultimecia.

"Do you think she was trying to break in, all that time?" he asked. Ultimecia had said she had followed Quistis back through Time Compression. That meant she had been embedded in Quistis' subconscious for more than a year. Squall decided that particular piece of information did not need to be passed on.

Quistis swept her hands through the loose curls at the front of her hair, tucking them behind her ears. "I don't know. I had these strong emotions... no, convictions, that didn't feel quite like mine. When you said Seifer was coming back, I was so disgusted. I kept thinking, _he doesn't deserve to come near me. He failed me._ Even though I knew I didn't really feel like that. And with Rinoa... I was so determined to get her to leave Garden. I kept telling myself it was for her happiness, but..."

She trailed off, and he completed her sentence. "It was her. Ultimecia was trying to clear the path to me."

"Why? I knew she hated you. I felt it. But I never understood why she was so obsessed with you."

"I'm the one who killed her, physically, for a start. And as Commander, I suppose I represented the whole of SeeD to her. She seemed like she wanted to believe that I was the mastermind behind everything SeeD has ever done."

"I... I'm sorry, Squall."

"Forget about it."

Quistis looked him over from head to toe, her brow furrowed. "How did you defeat her? You're not even armed."

"She died. Her body was dying anyway. It was just a matter of time."

"Time...?"

He nodded. "That was all it took."

Quistis sighed, and laid her head on her folded arms. "That's somewhat ironic."

"In what way?"

"That Time ended up killing her. Time... She thought she could control it, but... I suppose that in the end, there's nothing more powerful."

"Mm." Squall's eyes drifted back to the spot where the future Rinoa had taken her last breath, as the ruthless flow of Time erased every second of her existence. He willed her to flicker back into being, to feel her ice-cold arms around him one last time.

Clouds drifted across the supermoon, and Squall and Quistis sat in silence, each lost in their own thoughts.

* * *

Squall lay sprawled on the sofa in his empty quarters, his Triple Triad deck in his hands. He had had some trouble locating it, pushed back as it was to the furthest reaches of the cupboard, ousted from its pride of place by endless stacks of documents.

He rifled through the cards. Red Giant, Elnoyle, Tonberry. Each one brought back memories. Cards had been so important in his life, something to cling to when nothing else made sense. He'd won far more cards during the few hectic months of the war than he had in the past year as Commander. Well, that would change. Starting from now.

It all would.

The door slammed, and Angelo leapt on him before Rinoa was even in the room. Squall moved the cards safely out of reach, sat up, and gently pushed the dog's face out of his own, to see Rinoa standing forlornly at the entrance to the living area.

"Quistis called Caraway's house. She told me what happened. I came back as quickly as I could, but..." Her cheeks were stained with fresh tears. "Oh Squall, I'm so sorry I wasn't there. Are you... Are you all right?"

Squall walked over to her and, remembering the promise he had made, cupped her face in his hands and said, "You're beautiful, Rinoa."

Flustered, she shrank out of his hold. "What kind of an answer is that?"

"You are, though." He craned his head to kiss her, and she succumbed for a few moments before pulling away.

"But I... I wasn't there when you needed me. I'm so sorry, Squall."

"It was always going to happen when you weren't there. We knew that. It's okay."

"It's not, I couldn't do anything-"

"You did. You saved my life. Future-you. You fought Ultimecia single-handedly, Rin."

She gasped. "Is that what...? Quistis didn't say anything like that."

"I didn't tell her."

She searched his eyes, and nodded, seeming to accept his decision to omit the truth to Quistis, and to SeeD. Squall knew that she would take this secret to the grave, without having to ask.

"What happened to the other me?" she asked quietly.

"I don't know. She's definitely gone, though."

Rinoa nodded again, and reached forward to stroke his cheek with a gentleness that he welcomed more than anything in that moment.

"You look like you've been grieving for her."

"Maybe. I feel as though I saw you die, even though you're right here. It's... strange."

Her arms curled around his shoulders, and he let himself be pulled into her warmth. The burning sense of loss rose up his throat and pricked at his tear ducts. It meant nothing anymore; it was nonsense. He was mourning the loss of a person who would never even exist. A person whose foundations stood right in front of him, her heart beating steadily against his own ribs. He blinked the emotion away from his eyes, and let her go.

"So Caraway wasn't sick, then?"

"No. But it ended up being a good thing that I went. We actually talked. Talked properly, for the first time in years. He spoke about my mom a lot. About how we used to be, as a family. Things I was too young to remember. It... Well, it helped me. I felt like... Maybe I am someone, after all." She gave a self-conscious smile.

"Of course you are."

"All this time, I've been feeling so lost about who I am, and..." Rinoa fiddled with the rings around her neck, her fingers absently caressing her mother's silver wedding band. "It was pretty stupid of me not to consider my childhood, where I came from, how important those things are."

"I don't think it was stupid. It took me a long time to do that, too." Squall knew how much he had changed when he'd finally faced up to his repressed memories of the orphanage, of Ellone, and forced himself to confront his sense of abandonment. How the lost pieces somewhere deep in his core had settled into place when he allowed himself to accept that Raine and Laguna were his parents.

She looked up at him, half embarrassed, half in admiration. "This is a journey that you've already made, isn't it?"

Squall shook his head. "I'm still barely on my first steps, Rin." He thought about Laguna, and how their relationship had failed to get off the ground, and slowly realized that it didn't have to stay that way.

"Well, I'm glad I saw him... my dad. Even if I was tricked into leaving Garden." Rinoa wrinkled her nose. "Huh. Didn't think I'd ever feel grateful to Ultimecia for something."

"In a way, I am too. I mean, she did come here to kill me, and she would have succeeded, but... I've been able to make some decisions I might not have made otherwise."

"What do you mean?"

"I handed in my notice yesterday. As of next week, I'm no longer Commander. I submitted a request to apply to be an Instructor. We haven't had a gunblade tutor since Aki retired, so I'm reasonably sure Garden will accept."

Rinoa was speechless, and it occurred to Squall that it was entirely possible that she didn't actually know how much he hated being Commander. But then again, had he ever told her? Had he even hinted at it?

"I'll take missions as a regular SeeD until I get certified. It shouldn't take more than a few months," he explained, and she gaped at him.

"But... why?"

"My duty as a SeeD started and ended with her. With Ultimecia. I've done everything Matron and Cid intended me to. It's time for me to make my own choices."

"Who'll be Commander?"

"I've recommended Quistis. I think the post should be merged with Headmaster. Or Headmistress, in her case. SeeD's not actively at war anymore." He took Rinoa's hand and led her to the sofa. "She'll be far better suited to overseeing Seifer's court martial. I don't want to be involved. It's a relief to know that I don't have to be, now."

"But... everything you trained for, Squall... Would you really be satisfied with spending your career teaching kids how to use a gunblade?"

Squall twisted his head to look at his gunblade case, leaning against the far wall, Lion Heart's blue gleam concealed within. He suppressed a smile as he remembered his own words to Zell. _It's not about the opponent. It's about the blade._

"You mean, get paid to use my blade all day long without having to kill anyone or risk my own life? I think it's safe to say I'll find it more satisfying than stamping contracts and wading through the Garden accounts."

A series of realizations crossed Rinoa's face, and he knew for sure that she really had thought he enjoyed being Commander. He made a note to himself: _Talk to your girlfriend in future. You idiot._

"Point taken," she said, smiling, and he let himself smile back.

"There's other doors this will open, too. Commander Leonhart could never openly be Laguna's son, but Instructor Leonhart... well, I don't see any reason why he couldn't quietly discover it, a year or two down the line."

Rinoa slipped her hand into his. "That'd make Laguna really happy."

It would, Squall thought, and the idea brought an unexpected surge of warmth to his chest. "Also, Rin, instructors don't have to live on campus. I've been thinking... We could rent a house in Balamb together. You could find something that you love doing, and-"

She pulled her hand away, her expression troubled. "So this is for me? Is that what this is all about?"

"No. This is for both of us. I don't want to live like this anymore, either. I want to have a life. A home. A family, even. With you. Everything I never had." He took both of her hands, suddenly aware that he was saying the most important things, the things he had always wanted to tell her but had never, somehow, managed to. "I realized I don't have to spend my life thinking that I can never have all that. But it's up to you, Rin. What do you want?"

She bit her lip, and he saw she was nervous, happy, hopeful, all at once.

"The same. You. Us."

_Us. _He liked the sound of that.

* * *

A/N: Just the epilogue to go now. Hope everyone's staying safe. Thanks for reading.


	14. Chapter 14

Disclaimer: I make no claim whatsoever to the characters or world of Final Fantasy VIII, which is the property of Squaresoft/Square Enix.

* * *

**Epilogue**

She heard Ellone's scream of triumph reverberating inside her skull, and that was when she knew it was truly over.

The last thing Rinoa saw before the particles of her being ruptured and dissipated was Squall's face. His eyes, still so young, with an unwritten future now lying ahead of him. That was enough for her to know it was worth it, and she submitted to the pure white light with no regrets.

And then... nothing.

Nothing stretched on and on, welcoming her, cradling her.

_Nothing isn't so bad really_, she thought with dimly registered surprise. Was this all it was? It felt just like... sleeping.

One violent, shuddering gasp forced its way out of her mouth, and she was awake.

Her first sight was Squall's dark head, craned over a book, his face angled away from her.

Her teeth chattered from residual cold as her disorientation was swept aside by the tide of relief that coursed through her. "You're alive, you're alive, you're alive," she stammered, and he closed the book and turned to look at her.

Squall took off his reading glasses, folded them and placed them on top of the book he was reading. The title, in large white print on a dark cover, was _Falling Through a Hole in Time _by Ellone Loire. A calm, sleepy part of Rinoa's mind thought, _oh right, I forgot Elle's third novel just came out, _while the other, bewildered side of her wondered why on earth Ellone's name was on the cover of a book. She stared at it, then at Squall. He was smiling at her, his eyes crinkling at the edges. The beginnings of lines were settled comfortably in his face, lines that had not been there when he was nineteen. There was an easiness, a peace to him.

"You okay, Rin?"

"I don't - I don't know." She sat up the the bed, and looked around the bedroom of their Balamb townhouse. Crumpled sheets, pale blue pillows dented from her own head. A wedding photo on the wall, a discarded dog toy on the floor. No clock on the bedside table. "What time is it?"

Squall looked at his watch. "About one-thirty. In the afternoon, I should add."

It came then, the huge rush of realization, as the half-asleep side of her consciousness crashed into the other, and the schism between the two closed. Rinoa woke up fully, and started to bolt out of the bed in panic. "Oh holy Hyne! The _kids!_"

Squall reached out to grab her arms as she lurched towards him. "It's all fine. I asked Dad to take them to school." He pushed lightly on her shoulders until she was sitting back down on the bed, and she stared at him in incomprehension.

"But... What about Garden?"

"Quistis roped Seifer in to cover my classes."

"Seifer? Are you okay with that?"

Squall shrugged. "It makes sense. He's the only experienced gunblader on the SeeD roster who's not out on a mission right now." He smiled at her worried face. "Rin, I think my pride can handle it. We've put enough years between everything to be civil to each other, at least."

Rinoa attempted to comb a hand through her hair; it got stuck immediately. She wondered what kind of bird's nest-like disaster had developed overnight. "How could I sleep so long? Why didn't you wake me?"

"I couldn't. I tried. Something wasn't right. You were thrashing around a lot. I phoned Dr. Kadowaki, and she said to just let you sleep it off."

"You've been sitting there all this time?"

"Mostly I was lying next to you." He crawled onto the bed, slipped an arm around her and kissed her on the forehead. "Remember anything? From your dreams?"

"I was dreaming about being the other me. The one with your scar."

Squall took her face in his hands and studied her carefully. "Just dreaming?"

"D'you think it can have been more than that?"

"It's more than nine years now, isn't it? I've always wondered... I always hoped she wouldn't just fall out of existence. Maybe she'd join up with you somehow."

"Maybe she has." Rinoa ran a finger down her forehead, and felt an odd jolt of shock at the uncut skin. "Everything felt so real. All those memories, they're still there. I saw your dead body in Garden's morgue. I went crazy. I hurt people. That all _happened_. I..."

Squall's arms were wrapped around her now, and she inhaled the scent of his t-shirt. "I saw you... dead... and I remember being frozen in the Memorial. The cold of it..." She shuddered. "I still feel it in my bones. Even though I remember marrying you, being pregnant, giving birth, moving to this house... all of it, at the same time as the other half. It's like I have two sets of memories, all of a sudden. It feels so strange."

"Then it sounds like she made it back."

"I guess she did."

He pulled back from her, his face sincere. "Thank you. Both of you. I never got to say it to her before she disappeared."

"Oh, Squall. My head hurts to think about it. Am I both of them now? Both of me?"

"You're Rinoa." His smile grew crooked. "Do you remember what you said back then? When you teased me about having two of you at the same time?"

She poked him in the chest with one finger. "Oh, I get it, mister. You think now's your chance?"

"Well, all three of us are finally in the same room. Which, conveniently, has a bed in it."

"Logical as always."

He leaned in, his eyes twinkling with suggestion. "Plus we've still got a couple of hours until school finishes."

Rinoa removed his wandering hands from her hips and yawned. "Fix me up some breakfast and I'll consider it."

"Deal."

He smirked at her and left the room. Rinoa lay her head back on the pillows and listened to the sounds of her husband shuffling around the kitchen. The whistle of the old-fashioned kettle she'd bought in Dollet. The crackle of eggs sizzling in the pan. Squall hated eggs, but he still cooked them for her without fail. She could never count all those little things, the ways in which he showed her his love without even thinking about it.

The half of her that had been frozen in time, the half that was beginning to thaw and feel alive once more, breathed out a long sigh of contentment. Here she was at last. This was their future, the future that had been stolen from her for nine years, and it was peaceful, unremarkable and resoundingly glorious.

* * *

Thank you to everyone who read this fic. I hope you enjoyed it. With special thanks to all those who took the time to write reviews - you encouraged me so much. It's been so fulfilling for me to read other peoples' thoughts about what I've written. So you, dear reader, even if you're reading this months or years down the line, I'd love to hear what you thought. I always do my best to reply.

It's been... insane how much the world has changed while I've been writing this. I uploaded Ch1 in late December, a week or so before Covid-19 was identified... then by the later chapters, we were all in a full-blown global pandemic. It began to feel kind of inappropriate, frivolous I guess, to be posting a fanfic while most of the world was going into lockdown. I hope, if you've been reading this as I've been uploading it, maybe my silly story took your mind off the coronavirus situation for a few minutes. Take care everyone.

Thanks again for reading! -colobonema

P.s. If you're a reader of my other stories, you've probably noticed that this epilogue dovetails with the fluffy happy-ever-after-future I envisaged for Squall and Rinoa in "Three Anniversaries". (With a bit of retconning over the ages of their kids. Feel free to imagine that they had two children in their twenties, and two more in their thirties - more Squinoa babies is never a bad thing, right?)


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